Shares on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) showed a weak trend at the end of April 2019, with the MSM 30 Index falling by 16.6% to close at 3,945.6 points from 4,729.1 points for the same period of 2018.
Among different sub-sectors, manufacturing sub-index plunged by 27% to 4,646 points in April 2019, compared to 6,368 points for the same period of last year, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI). The financial services sub-index fell by 12.8% to 6,338 points in April 2019 from 7,267 points in the same month of 2018. Similarly, services sub-sector index fell 19.4% to 2,034 points in 2019 compared to 2,525 points in 2018, the NCSI data show. Further, the market turnover at MSM fell 36.3% to OMR193.6 million in the first four months of 2019, from OMR303.9 million for the same period of 2018. Also, the net purchase of Omani investors on the Muscat bourse was at OMR197,000 in April 2019, against OMR43.1 million for the same period of 2018, the NCSI report showed. However, there was a drop in the net purchase of GCC and Arab investors reaching OMR1.53 million and OMR316,000, respectively, at the end of April 2019. Other foreign investors were also net sellers to the extent of OMR2.05 million worth of shares in April 2019, against OMR256,000 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 25.2%, reaching 1.27 million in April 2019. In 2018, the Muscat bourse closed with the MSM 30 Index ending at 4,323.7 points, while the market turnover stood at OMR762.71 million.