While the fall in number of issues was 53 per cent from 49 issues in 1997-98 to 26 issues in 1998-99, Prime said today. The continuing fall in the rights mobilisation is mainly due to lack of investors confidence and to the generally subdued secondary market.

There has been continuous decline in funds mobilisation through rights issues which had peaked in 1992-93 at Rs 12,630 crore from 488 issues. In the subsequent year it declined to Rs 9,306 crore from 384 issues, in 1994-95, 351 companies raised Rs 6,793 crore.

In 1995-96 companies raised Rs 6,520 crore from 291 issues which further declined to Rs 2,724 crore from 131 issues, Prime said. Prime Database managing director Prithvi Haldea said investors' apathy is a major factor for the current state of themarket along with the secondary market price of several good scrips have been languishing at much lesser than their fundamental strengths and to make an issue at a further discount is obviously not prudent.

Haldea said continuing poor state of the rights markets has severely affected the expansion and diversification programmes of the existing listed companies.

According to Prime, during the year, there were only four rights issues above Rs 50 crore from India Cements (Rs 161 crore), Exide (Rs 72 crore), SWIL (Rs 62 crore) and Hindustan Motors (Rs 54 crore).

Given the state of the market and high level of investors disinterest, current fiscal is not likely to see any significant improvement in the situation, Haldea said. There are about 10 companies who have approached SEBI for clearance of their rights issue. These include - ACC (Rs 188 crore), Kodak India (Rs 73 crore), Abbot Laboratories (Rs 23 crore), Hindustan National Glass (Rs 15 crore).

The other companies which have approached SEBI for rightsissues are - Modi GBC (Rs 14 crore), Hindustan Spinning (Rs 7 crore) Herdilla Chemicals (Rs 5 crore), Nuland Flexipack (Rs 5 crore) and Epic Enzymes.