Mainland shares remain weak on Wed

Jun. 12, 2008 (China Knowledge) - Mainland shares continued to lose ground on Wednesday with the Shanghai key index once dropped below 3,000 points in the morning session shortly after the release of the PPI figure in May.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A shares and B shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, lost 1.57% or 48.09 to 3,024.24 points after fluctuating between 3,064.20 and 2,992.35 points.

Similarly, the Shenzhen Component Index on the smaller Shenzhen Stock Exchange dipped 2.86% or 307.82 points to 10,458.08 points, after touching an intraday low of 10,344.60 points.

The combined turnover on the two bourses declined to RMB 80.6billion from RMB 89.3 billion of the previous trading day.

China's PPI rose 8.2% year-on-year in May, 0.1% higher than April's 8.1%, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

Most of the top 20 heavy weights suffered losses except for a few brokerage blue chips, such as Haitong Securities<600837> and CITIC Securities<600030>. The former soared by the daily cap of 10% to RMB 28.87 and the latter rose 2.84% to RMB 32.18. Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco)<601600><2600><ACH> plunged 6.50% to RMB 15.39. China Merchants Bank<600036><3968> moved down 4% to RMB 24.10.

Property developers fell across the board with half of them dropped more than 5%, dampening the index. COFCO Property (Group) Co<000031> dived 8.03% to RMB 13.18. Poly Real Estate<600048> slumped 7.09% to RMB 14.81 and China Vanke<000002><200002> fell more than 5% to RMB 16.76.

Elsewhere, the agriculture sector bucked the dropping trend and made a pleasing performance yesterday with three of them booked a rise of 10%.

As a whole, losers outnumbered winners by 650 to 205 in Shanghai and 534 to 157 in Shenzhen.