KATHMANDU, Aug 16: Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) on Wednesday fell 20.31 points after the banks looked forward to increasing their interest rates effective from the next month.

The secondary market opened at 2,045.44 points and went as low as 2,021.79 points in the first half an hour of the commencement of trading. The market index remained almost flat for the next three hours and then dropped to the day’s low at 2,014.46 points. The market recovered by around 11 points in the last five minutes of the trading hours finally closing at 2,025.12 points.

Stockbrokers said the market was affected after the investors lost confidence to purchase shares, after a number of banks started raising interest rates to attract more deposits. According to them, banks are likely to increase their interest rates on both deposits and loans from next month.  

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chip companies also fell by a notable 5.54 points. The daily turnover declined sharply to Rs 1.679 billion from Rs 2.157 billion on Tuesday. 

All the 13 trading groups lost their market values. Nine of them lost double-digit points, while non-life insurance posted the biggest loss of 97.41 points.  

Among individual companies, the market values of 185 companies declined. On the other hand, only 34 companies were registered gainers.

Himalayan Distillery Limited, with turnover of Rs 84.15 million, topped in terms of transaction volume. While Mountain Hydro Nepal Limited lost the highest of 8.06 percent, Sunrise Focused Equity Fund added four percent in its market price and topped the gainers’ list.

 
• Nepse
 
• declines