Kathmandu, November 26:

With improvement in share prices of commercial banks, the stock trading at the country’s sole secondary market Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) recovered this week with a marginal growth. And the Nepse index registered a growth of 0.63 point. According to weekly share trading review, the index opened at 300.57 points on Sunday, and went up to close at 301.20 points on Thursday, the last day for share transactions under a regular lot. The trading has plunged by 5.51 points last week. According to group-wise analysis, leading groups including commercial banks and insurance groups recovered and finance and trading groups maintained their growth trend, while the manufacturing and the development banks groups posted lose.

Although the Nepse index maintained growth, the total value of share transaction couldn’t pick up as it stood at Rs 84,087,004 from 1,368 transactions of 502,283 share units. Last week’s total trading value was of Rs 95,358,325 through 1,992 transactions of 274,582 shares. Of the 63 listed companies, 54 companies saw their transaction this week. The commercial banks group, the largest scrip by volume at the Nepse floor, recovered from last week’s heavy loss and recorded a growth of 2.63 points. The group’s index that started at 324.55 points on Sunday went up to 327.18 points on the closing day. The group had lost by over six points last week.

Among the listed groups, the trading group witnessed registered a healthy growth of 5.29 points. Likewise, the finance and the insurance groups also posted growth in their respective indices. The Nepse indices of these groups opened at 235.62 points and 323.12 points and went up to close at 236.83 points and 323.54 points respectively. Of these two groups, the finance group had posted growth, while insurance had lost last week. However, the manufacturing group suffered a heavy loss of about six points, as its Nepse index plunged to 274.08 points on the closing day. The group, which had gained last week, started its trading with 290.04 points on Sunday.

The development bank group’s index closed at 223.39 points on the closing day from the opening 223.75 points. The other group and the hotel group, however, remained constant at 323.66 points and 177.90 points respectively. Of the listed eight groups, the commercial banks group continued its domination by capturing the largest chunk of share at Nepse. It captured 61.80 per cent of the total share. The hotel group came in behind, accounting about 18.63 per cent. The finance group had 16.22 per cent, while the trading group contributed 1.38 per cent. The insurance group followed with 1.36 per cent. The development banks and the manufacturing groups had a 0.39 per cent and 0.26 per cent respectively.

NIC Bank topped all the companies in terms of number of transaction with 249 transactions. But, Soaltee Hotels stood first for the number of shares traded for the week. A total of 307,122 shares of the hotel with a paid up price of Rs 10 each were traded. Bank of Kathmandu beat all the listed companies for highest trading in terms of monetary value at Rs 16,258,590. The Nepse floor remained open for five days under regular lot, where the shares of Nepal Investment Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Himalayan Bank, Nepal SBI Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Bank of Kathmandu, NIC Bank, Machhapuchhre Bank and Lumbini Bank were traded.