BELGRADE (Serbia), November 1 (SeeNews) – The Belgrade Stock Exchange (BELEX) - beset by political worries - saw its shares fall again on Thursday with blue-chip commercial bank AIK Banka attracting the largest turnover, brokers said.
“The only interesting thing today was the big volume of AIK Banka,” Nikola Renovica, a broker with Beomonet brokerage, told SeeNews.
AIK Banka added 0.45% to 10,114 dinars ($189/131 euro) in 191 million dinars of turnover, the largest for the day.
“There is no particular reason but it could be some kind of pre-agreed deal as it is not quite normal that the price did not jump on such a volume,” Renovica said.
“Nothing else can be said [about the trading], only that it is all in fall and ideal for buying,” Renovica added.
The blue-chip BELEX15 index dropped for the 17th day in a row, by 0.27% to 2,506.42 points, while the broader BELEXline index fell 0.42% to 4,113.85 points.
Total BELEX turnover fell to 396 million dinars from 404 million dinars on Wednesday.
The joint SRX index of the bourses in Belgrade and Vienna remained unchanged at 1,445.15 points
“This correction is even bigger than the summer one and some say it is because of the political situation and the final decision on Kosovo in December,” the broker said.
Instead of the anticipated livening-up of the bourse after the dull summer holiday period, the Serbian market has continued with dull trading and tiny turnovers in September and October and brokers said the Kosovo crisis remained the main obstacle to market recovery.
In September a new round of talks on the status of the volatile U.N.-run southern Serbian province started and is due to conclude by December 10. The U.S. and most EU countries are thought to be ready to recognise Kosovo’s independence, while Russia and Serbia adamantly oppose it. However, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority have repeatedly said they will unilaterally declare independence after December 10 if it is not granted.
Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since NATO bombs drove out Serb forces amid inter-ethnic fighting in 1999. Serbs oppose any form of independence for the province while Kosovo's ethnic Albanians insist on it.
(1 euro = 77.1559 dinars)