Despite enormous challenges, Pakistan's capital market had managed to grow and that growth further brought positive prospects in future, Ambassador of the European Union Lars-Gunnar Wigemark on Friday said this during his visit to the Lahore Stock Exchange (LSE).
Wigemark and his team were given an update of the Pakistan's capital market by the LSE officials. It was informed that the LSE had been contributing to gear up the economy's growth in terms of both local and foreign investment. During the meeting, Wigemark affirmed that the EU would like to promote the objectives of increased regional trade in South Asia to boost trade and take advantage of the mutual benefits likewise.
He also stated that given the current challenges facing to the country with respect to the economy and the socio-political factors affecting the capital market, Pakistan's capital market had yet managed to grow which would further brought positive prospects in the future, in particular to the upcoming elected government that was expected to revise the economic and the social reforms. He supported LSE MD Aftab Chaudhry's opinion to foresee increase in the foreign investment especially investment coming from the expatriates to double from its current figure that was calculated to be US $16 billion.
During the information session, MD Lahore Stock Exchange also highlighted the steps taken by the LSE contributing to build a mechanism that had produced more transparency in the trading of the shares as well as to secure the investment of the investors at the hands of the brokers.
Some of the major steps include; demutualisation of the Exchange, investor's awareness programme, financial literacy programme as part of the Corporate Social Responsibility, establishing of separate bodies such as CDC, Central Depository Company and NCCPL, National Clearing Company of Pakistan that have been set up to further protect the investor's capital by giving more rights to hold access to their account and to encourage the trade of the shares to take place by the investor himself.
Aftab highlighted on the performance of the capital market of Pakistan by stating some basic points to evaluate the performance such as the market capitalisation that amounted to US $44 billion contributing to 17 percent of the economy's GDP. He also shared the ranking of the global market performance study that had ranked the Pakistan's market performance to be on the top. It may be noted that LSE was a fully electronic and completely automated stock exchange of Pakistan. LSE is the only domestic exchange to have more than one trading floors, besides being the only exchange in the region to have established a unified order book with another domestic exchange.