KARACHI: Sentiment on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained positive during the last week on IMF loan approval expectations.
The last week was very short as only two trading sessions were held due to Eid holidays and bulls dominated in the both sessions held on Monday and Tuesday.
The benchmark KSE-100 index gained 1,387.37 points on a week-on-week basis and finally closed at 41,452.69 points at the end of the last week as against 40,065.32 points a week earlier. The market capitalization increased by Rs 206 billion during the last week to reach Rs 6.369 trillion.
Healthy trading activities were witnessed on the ready counter as overall 461.569 million shares were traded with daily average trading of 230.7 million shares compared to previous week’s average of 131 million shares.
BRIndex100 rose by 166.53 points during the last week to close at 4,103.40 points compared to 3,936.87 points a week earlier. Total turnover at BRIndex100 was 381.751 million shares.
BRIndex30 also gained 691.34 points on a week-on-week basis to close at 14,135.32 points with trading volumes of 260.318 million shares.
Last week began with great hopes at the PSX for the resumption of the IMF’s 9th review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) after the Prime Minister met with MD IMF in an attempt to revive the halted program.
Following this development, the SBP also announced to lift import restrictions to help the industrial sector. Investors were active throughout the week, with substantial purchasing seen across the board.
Although, instead of resumption of the EFF Program, the IMF has approved a standby loan of $3 billion for Pakistan on Friday. IMF short-term program, Standby Arrangement (SBA), which will be for 9 months and it will help to restore some investor confidence.
Analysts said that standby loan program approval will pave the way for inflows from other multilateral and bilateral partners as well as friendly countries which should shove up the country’s FX reserves and ease-off pressure on the external front.
Meanwhile, according to Arif Habib Limited, Pakistan’s stock market remained flat during the last fiscal year (FY23) amid a challenging economic situation alongside political uncertainty during the year, to close at 41,541 points. While, it down by 29 percent YoY on USD basis.
The benchmark equity bourse experienced a volatile period recently amid uncertain events on the back of various exogenous and macroeconomic indicators turning red, which dampened the sentiment of the index.
Factors like mounting external sector challenges, delay in the resumption of the IMF program, ballooning fiscal deficit, upsurge in inflationary readings, 825bps jump in the policy rate taking it to historic high-level of 22 percent - all combined made equities least attractive.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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