Staff report
KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed an uptick in the trade of shares with the benchmark KSE-100 index gaining 490.87 points to trade at 39,546.52 points at 10:20 after the opening bell on Wednesday morning.
PSX stocks witness a bullish trend
The KSE-100 saw a bullish trend on the hopes that the government will agree to the conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund for the revival of the ninth review amounting to $1.22 billion.
Earlier, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that his coalition government was ready to swallow the bitter pill of international lender’s tough conditions to revive the ninth review. He said the ruling coalition was prepared to sacrifice its political career to save the country. The premier had said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led government has conveyed its intentions to the IMF to complete the ninth review.
Ismail Iqbal Securities’ Head of Research Fahad Rauf told a local daily that expectations were mounting that the federal government would take concrete measures to revive the IMF programme to avert default.
He said that exploration and production shares were performing well on the hopes that the circular debt would be reduced and gas prices hiked.
Aba Ali Habib Securities’ Salman Naqvi said that the uncapping of the USD-PKR exchange rate was another factor for the bullish trend as it was of the IMF’s primary conditions to adhere to a market-based exchange rate.
He said that the interest rate was raised by 1 per cent on Monday, which was lower than market expectations of 1.5-2 per cent, and it had a positive effect on the cement and steel sectors.
