Shares on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) showed a weak trend at the end of March 2020, with the MSM 30 Index falling by 13.4% to close at 3,448.3 points from 3,983.7 points for the same period of 2019.
Among different sub-sectors, manufacturing sub-index plunged by 15.8% to 3,903 points in March 2020, compared to 4,637 points for the same period of 2019, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
The financial services sub-index fell by 16.8% to 5,444 points by the end of March 2020 from 6,541 points in the same month of 2019. Similarly, services sub-sector index fell 14.7% to 1,688 points in March 2020 compared to 1,980 points in 2019, the NCSI data show.
Further, the market turnover at MSM rose by 18% to OMR178.4 million in the first three months of 2020, from OMR151.1 million for the same period of 2019.
Also, the net purchase of Omani investors on the Muscat bourse was at OMR20.61 million in March 2020, the NCSI report showed.
However, there was a drop in the net purchase of GCC and Arab investors reaching OMR1.60 million and OMR823,000, respectively, at the end of March 2020. Other foreign investors were also net sellers to the extent of OMR19.83 million worth of shares in March 2020, against OMR2.20 million for the same period of the previous year.
The data also showed that there was a fall in total number of shares traded on the local bourse by 15.7%, reaching 820.2 million in March 2020.
In 2019, the Muscat bourse closed with the MSM 30 Index ending at 3,981.2 points, while the market turnover stood at OMR711.55 million.