Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah (File)
After the new government came into existence in Nepal, people were hopeful that the situation there would improve, but till now the situation has not improved much. The condition of Nepali stock market is also bad. The investors here were hopeful that with the formation of the new government led by Balen Shah, a new era of confidence would begin. But this could not happen and in the last 5 months itself a decline of 380 points has been recorded.
The Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP)-led government, which has nearly a two-thirds majority, was expected to bring political stability, clean policies and increase investor confidence in the country. But on the contrary, the market is moving in the opposite direction. In the next 106 days since the RSP took power in March, Nepal’s stock market has been a disappointment.
47 days of decline in 73 trading days
Out of 73 trading days during the tenure of the Shah government, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index fell for 47 days and rose for only 26 days. During this period, the market fell by more than 380 points. Yesterday on Monday, the market went below the support level of 2,580 points and closed at 2,570.28 points. This is the lowest level in more than 6 months.
Nepali market experts say that this decline shows that sellers have the upper hand. Earlier, the index had last closed below this level on December 22, 2025 at 2,581.24 points.
Only decline in 5 months
The NEPSE index stood at 2,950.50 on March 26, 2026, a day before Balendra Shah became the Prime Minister of Nepal. But by Monday, it fell to 2,570.28 points. In this way, this fall of more than 380 points in the last 5 months shows the depth of investors’ disappointment.
During this period, the total size of the stock market declined by approximately Rs 600 billion, thus reducing the value of investors’ holdings. Market capitalization, which was Rs 5.009 trillion on March 26, fell to Rs 4.416 trillion by Monday.
steadily declining trust
The main reason for this decline is considered to be the weak confidence of investors amidst investigation of incidents related to the stock market and uncertainty about the intentions of the government. Till Monday, 79.86 lakh people had opened their demat accounts for share trading. Of them, 47 lakh people have opened Trading Management System (TMS) accounts for online transactions in the secondary market.
However, out of these, only around 4 lakh are active investors. NEPSE generally considers investors who have bought or sold shares at least once a year as active investors.
Number of listed companies stable
In Nepal, as of mid-May, there were 294 companies listed on NEPSE, compared to 271 at the same time last year. Of the listed companies, 133 are banks, financial institutions and insurance companies. Apart from this, there are 103 hydropower companies, 28 manufacturing and processing companies. Also included are 9 hotels, 7 investment companies, 4 trading companies and 10 companies in the “other” category.
Banks and Financial Institutions (BFIs) and insurance companies account for 50.7 percent of the total securities market capitalization. Hydropower companies account for 17.5 percent, followed by manufacturing and processing industries at 8.8 percent, “other” category at 8.3 percent, investment companies at 6.9 percent, trading companies at 4.6 percent and hotels at 3.3 percent.
