ZAGREB (Croatia), December 5 (SeeNews) – Croatian share indices and volumes sharply rose on Wednesday with talks on setting up the country's next cabinet under way and political uncertainty diminishing, brokers said.
"The market mood is positive in line with the end of the period of uncertainty on who will form a government and amid bullish sentiment on markets abroad," Ivana Bergam, a fund manager with Interinvest, told SeeNews.
The outgoing conservative HDZ party this week started talks with the centre-oriented HSS-HSLS coalition on forming a government.
The HDZ has a slight edge over the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, after Croatia’s parliamentary elections on November 25, partial results indicate. However, each of the two main contenders has said it would seek to enter a coalition with smaller parties to form a cabinet.
Turnover in floor trading surged to 94.8 million kuna ($19 million/12 million euro) from less then 40 million kuna in the past two days. However it, remained below the levels before the start of a recent slide in share prices that the Croatian market has faced since its peak in mid-October.
The 30-share Crobex index of the Zagreb Stock Exchange (ZSE) closed at 4,839.82, up 3.13%.
The Croemi 20-share index, calculated by commercial bank Raiffeisenbank Austria, moved 3.07% higher to 3,956.89 points. Each of them has gained some 45% since the beginning of the year.
The narrowest CROX index of the seven most traded stocks on the ZSE, which the Vienna Stock Exchange launched this summer, was up 2.26% to 2,537.21 in euro terms.
Civil engineering institute IGH’s shares were the most traded with 12.5 million kuna of turnover. They jumped 8.25% to 12,800 kuna closing, without any specific reason, Bergam said.
Telecommunications group T-HT went up 1.04% to 340 kuna on 9.6 million kuna of turnover.
Shares of shipping companies Atlantska Plovidba and Jadroplov rose 3.52% and 1.39% respectively.
Overall gainers outnumbered losers by 75 to 22 and 17 shares were unchanged.
The fixed-income Crobis index ended at 96.14, slightly down from 96.20 on Tuesday.
(1 euro=7.3254 Croatian kuna)