Kathmandu, November 24

Due to various technical glitches in the software of the online trading system, the country’s sole secondary market — Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) — has failed to manage online trading system properly.

The technical problems encountered by the stock market’s newly-installed online trading system have significantly reduced the trading volume, eroding the confidence of the stock investors.

As a result of the problem in its system, Nepse has also failed to update weekly summary data and records of trading as well since November 3.

“We have been continuously facing problems while trading after Nepse started online trading,” stated Uttam Aryal, chairman of Investors Association of Nepal.

“Nepse has failed to ease the problem related to the process of registering a client’s details,” he said, adding that stock traders are also unable to view the immediate rates of a company’s share price, amongothers.

Nepse had earlier boasted that stock transactions would be completed in 50 microseconds once its system was fully automated. “But we now have to wait for more than three minutes to complete each transaction,” Aryal informed.

The online trading system of Nepse has been constantly facing problems since it was introduced on November 7. “Nepse launched the online trading system without itself being ready for the process,” he said.

Meanwhile, Priyaraj Regmi, former chairman of Stock Brokers Association of Nepal, mentioned that if this problem persists then trading volume will remain low, hitting the benchmark index, which has been on a freefall for the last several weeks and was at 1,181.24 points on Thursday.

However, Aryal said that Nepse was also on a decline due to the unavailability of funds in the market. “Banks and financial institutions have not been disbursing loans to investors due to the liquidity crunch that they are facing.”

Moreover, brokers have also complained of the online trading system not being user-friendly.

“Contrary to our expectations, the software is not easy to handle and it takes more than 50 microseconds for a transaction unlike what the Nepse had claimed initially,” said Regmi, adding that this does not allow stockbrokers to make real-time trading.

“Nepse has assured us that they will ease the problems and make transactions smooth from Sunday,” he said.

Meanwhile, Nepse had recently organised a meeting with the software vendor, investors, brokers and other stakeholders to take stock of the problems related to the online system and find solutions on Thursday.

According to Chandra Singh Saud, general manger of Nepse, some of the problems related to trading have already been solved and YCO Pvt Ltd — software vendor company — has made a commitment to resolve the problems by Sunday.

Nepse, on the other hand, has said problems are cropping up because stockbrokers are not familiar with the new system. “We agree that there are problems in the online system but we are resolving them as well,” said Saud. “However, the stockbrokers are blowing the problems out of proportion.”

The problems at Nepse are not restricted to online share transaction only, according to traders. They complain that Nepse’s website is also not working properly since the trading was automated.

“As a result, there are errors in trading floor sheets, and inaccurate data are being displayed,” said Aryal. “Due to this we are not getting proper updates about the stock market.”