Kathmandu, August 11: Nepal Stock Exchange last week went down by 25.28 points (a fall of two percent) to close at 1,238.56 points due to Nepal Rastra Bank’s circular and the debate on the capital gain.
The capital market, which had opened at 1,263.84 points, fell by 4.2 points to close at 1,259.64 points on Sunday. On the successive two days, it continued to slip by 4.54 points and 9.37 points respectively.
It, however, gained 2.76 points on Wednesday followed again by a downturn of 9.93 points on Thursday.
The secondary course for the last few weeks has been affected by confusion over the complexity of calculating the amount of capital gains enforced by the tax authority. The Security Board of Nepal, the regulator of the stock exchange, has refused to deal with this matter saying that it is not authorized to make any decision on it. But Ministry of Finance seeks for the intervention of the board to resolve the issue of capital gains.
Stockbrokers said the latest circular issued by Nepal Rastra Bank has only contributed to making the share market investors more jittery. According to them, the banks have expressed dissatisfaction on the central bank’s new rule of calculating the spread rate, stating that the new provision will take down their profits heavily. This has further deteriorated the sense of confidence amongst the investors.
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group A companies also declined by 4.52 points to close at 268.01 points.
Last week, investors lost Rs 6.86 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio after the market capitalization declined to Rs 1,567.42 billion from Rs 1,574.28 billion.
Except trading, the indices of the rest of 10 groups plunged during the review period. Non-life Insurance lost the largest of 115.43 points to close at 4,958.1 points. Most of the other losers shed double-digits points in their share prices.
The index of ‘others’ went down by 9.02 points to close at 709.37 points. Trading, the only gainer of the weekday’s transaction gained 3.23 points.
Regarding the individual companies, the Agriculture Development Bank had a transaction of its shares worth Rs174.06 million, the largest in the segment.
Nepal Bank Limited, Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Company, Nepal Credit and Commerce Bank and Prabhu Bank were also among the top five companies with the largest amount of shares transactions.
Last week, stocks worth Rs 2.19 billion were traded which was 5.28 percent more than the amount in the previous week. The total number of traded shares, however, was down from 7,481,450 units to 7,438,850 units.
During the review period, Nepal Stock Exchange-listed 61,578,900 units of initial public offerings of Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Company and 32,850,000 units of initial public offerings of Sanjen Jalavidhyut Company.
