Kathmandu, July 18

The stock market witnessed growth for third consecutive day in the first week of new fiscal year 2017-18. With 4.93 per cent growth in the insurance sector, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index went up by 2.14 per cent or 34.26 points to 1638.41 points today. The sub-index of the insurance sector went up by 416.63 points to rest at 8,863.75 points with transactions in the sub-index amounting to Rs 385 million today.

“Low supply volume of the stocks of insurance companies boosted the market,” said Narendra Sijapati, former president of Stock Brokers’ Association of Nepal. “It also shows that investors have expectations of further growth in the market.”

Similar to Monday, the stock market today too saw exponential growth in transactions with total turnover of Rs 1.2 billion. Both sensitive and float indices rose by more than two per cent. The sensitive index went up to 347.63 points or 2.01 per cent and the float index surged by 2.15 per cent to 120.48 points.

The sub-index of hotels went up by 2.74 per cent or 61.52 points to 2303.66 points. Likewise, hydropower increased by 2.03 per cent to 1,957.27 points.

Besides the insurance sector, the other sub-indices of the financial sector also witnessed strong growth. The banking sub-index went up by 1.89 per cent to 1470.3 points and the development bank sector also moved up by 1.28 per cent or 25.2 points to 1999.7 points. Similarly, the finance sub-index too rose by 0.8 per cent or 5.95 points to 751.73 points.

Manufacturing and others also saw some gains today with growth of 0.87 per cent and 0.08 per cent, respectively. The manufacturing sub-index reached 2414.13 points and others closed at 695.86 points.

Nepal Life Insurance Company witnessed the highest turnover today at Rs 92.90 million with its share price closing at Rs 2,273.