A number of international media outlets including Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters have covered the news of Pakistan's re-entry into MSCI's emerging market index and have analysed its impact on Pakistan's capital markets.
"That's an interesting lesson from Pakistan....You had to have a period of time where investors got comfortable with the idea that they wouldn't close the market again," CNBC in its analysis quoted Adrian Mowat, managing director and chief Asian and emerging market equity strategist at J P Morgan.
The Wall Street Journal noted that the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made boosting foreign investment in Pakistan a key part of its plan to revive the country's economy when it came into power in 2013. Reuters mentioned in its report that over the past few years officials have been enacting a host of market reforms to regain the trust of investors, including demutualising Pakistan's bourses to weaken the influence of stockbrokers and deepen the investor base.
Bloomberg states that Asia's best-performing share market of 2016 could attract about $220 million of inflows, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co said in a note following MSCI's decision late on Tuesday in New York. The media outlet says that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has boosted economic growth in recent years and achieved relative stability through an International Monetary Fund loan program that averted an external payments crisis in 2013.
Yahoo News reports that Pakistan becomes the first frontier market since Qatar and the United Arab Emirates several years ago to earn the prestigious frontier-to-emerging promotion. Credit Suisse thinks that Pakistan is an economy that like India remains very domestically focused. That is reflected in the $28 billion equity market which is mostly domestic demand plays, including banks. The Pakistan economy has delivered successful growth in recent years, although the political environment remains difficult."-PR