ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) observed a strong bullish trend on Wednesday following Pakistan’s staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which led the benchmark KSE-100 Index to close with a gain of 1,139.15 points.
Positivity prevailed throughout the trading session as the benchmark index hit an intra-day high of 118,220.88. At close, the PSX benchmark index settled at 117,772.31, a positive change of 0.98 percent.
Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have reached a staff-level agreement on the first review under Pakistan’s 37-month $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and a new 28-month $1.3 billion arrangement under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
Advisor to Pakistan’s Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad confirmed the development on Wednesday.
Upon board approval, Pakistan will have access to about $1 billion under the EFF, bringing total disbursements under the EFF to about $2 billion, Khurram Schehzad wrote on X.
This development comes after an IMF team, led by Nathan Porter, held discussions with Pakistani officials between February 24 and March 14, 2025, in Karachi and Islamabad. Both sides also held virtual huddles.
On Wednesday, a total of 356,729,109 shares were traded as compared to 268,098,907 shares on the last working day, whereas the price of shares stood at Rs 37.498 billion against Rs 19.455 billion on the previous trading day.
As many as 436 companies transacted their shares in the stock market, 204 of them registered gains, and 167 met losses, whereas the share price of 65 companies remained unchanged.
On Tuesday, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) experienced volatility but ended with a slight recovery, closing at 116,633.17 points.
Globally, Asian stocks rose, following gains on Wall Street, while the US dollar remained stable as markets awaited more details on US President Donald Trump’s trade policy ahead of a new round of tariffs set for next week.
Traders received some hope after Trump indicated on Monday that not all tariffs would take effect on the April 2 deadline, and some countries would be granted exceptions, though no further details were provided.
