Kathmandu, March 11:

Siddhartha Bank Ltd whose stock has just been listed last week and opened for transaction from this week topped the share market in terms of number of transactions, units of share transacted and share value.

Shares of Siddhartha Bank Ltd generated Rs 208,692,60, by the sale of 71,990 units of shares traded through 1,478 transactions. The other significant changes in the stock market this week was the decline in the Nepal Stock Excha-nge (Nepse) index and decline of the indices of commercial banks and development banks.

After two good weeks in February and one in March, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index witnessed a decline of 1.71 points this week, whereas in the previous week it had an increment of 2.0 points.

On the third and fourth weeks of February, the Nepse index had shown an increment of 7.17 and 7.65 points, respectively. The Nepse index at the country’s sole secondary market started at 339.58 points on Sunday and went down to 337.87 points on the last day of trading under a regular lot.

The leading sector including commercial banks and development banks showed a decline in their index, whereas manufacturing groups, other groups, insurance group and finance group showed increment in their respective indices. The index of hotel group remained unchanged.

According to the Nepse, a total of 292,274 units of shares valued at Rs 101,112,058 were traded through 4,045 transactions this week.

Last week, a total of 168,614 units of shares changed hands generating a turnover of Rs 949,625,88 from 1,157 transactions. Of the 69 listed companies for share trading, only 57 companies saw transactions this week.

The weekly trading report of Nepse showed that the commercial banks group, which is the largest scrip by volume, captured 84.57 per cent of the total share transacted. The index of the group that opened at 376.82 points on Sunday went down to 373.64 points on the closing day, which is a decline of 3.18 points.

Likewise, the development bank index moved down by 9.35 points. The development bank index, which began at 288.50 on the first day of share trading this week went down to 279.15 on the closing day.

The manufacturing group index moved up from 286.43 to 289.73, insurance group reac-hed 344.93 from 344.14, whereas the trading group moved do-wn to 141.72 from 148.07, wh-ich is a decline of 6.35 points.

The finance group showed a meagre increment of 0.31 points and the other group had an increment of 6.0 points.

The other group index opened at 345.39 on Sunday and went up to 351.39 on the last day of regular trading. The index of the finance group changed from 250.35 to 250.66 on the second week of March.

The weekly trading report shows that the index of hotel group that opened on Sunday at 183.55 remained unaltered.

Of the total transactions that took place over the week at the Nepse floor, the commercial banks group continued to capture the lion’s share with 84.57 per cent. The share of finance group consisted of 11.61 per cent with manufacturing group following it at 1.58 per cent. The development bank transactions made up 0.16 per cent while the trading group and insurance group captured 0.59 and 1.49 per cent, respectively.

The total purchase of shares at the floor remained at 95 during the week, averaging 19 units per day. Total sales stood at 66, meaning that only 13 shares were sold on an average per day throughout the week.

The floor remained open for four days under the regular lot and one day for odd lot, where the shares of Nabil Bank Ltd, Standard Chartered Bank, Nepal SBI Bank, Everest Bank, Bank of Kathmandu, NIC Bank, Macchhapuchhure Bank, Kumari Bank, Lumbini Bank and Siddartha Bank were traded for five days.

Shares of Nepal Investment Bank, Himalayan Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Laxmi Bank, Nepal Life Insurance Company, Life Insurance Company, International Leasing and Finance Company Ltd and World Merchant and Finance shares were traded for four days.