A massive outflow of portfolio investment from the country''s equity market was witnessed on November 7 as over 86 million dollars were withdrawn only on a single day mainly by the UK, USA and Hong Kong investors.
According to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the special convertible rupee account (SCRA) balances has fallen to 267.622 million dollars on November 7 against 353.751 million dollars a day earlier.
"The foreign investors opted for profit taking and preferred to offload their holdings on available margins mainly due to prevailing uncertainty on political front in the country", a leading analyst said.
He said that selling was witnessed in some oil and fertiliser sector stocks by the foreign investors as these sectors remained among the most attractive ones for them.
Out of the total outflow of 86.128 million dollars, 62.776 million dollars were withdrawn only by the UK investors, while the investors from the US withdrew 18.624 million dollars and 8.843 million dollars by Hong Kong on November 07. As many as 120,514 dollars were withdrawn by Germany, and 608,985 dollars by Singapore on the said day. On the other hand, an inflow of 4.319 million dollars was witnessed from Switzerland, 410,912 dollars from the UAE and 115,056 dollars from Netherlands.