Daily Times

KARACHI: The bourse closed its week on a positive note as benchmark KSE-100 index closed 232 points higher at 41,661 levels on Friday.

The last day of the week landed in green zone after the World Bank has committed a total of $ 7.636 billion loans to Pakistan for various development projects and disbursed $ 2.41 billion so far. Investors’ interest was also seen after the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has expressed willingness to invest $1 billion for the development of various projects in Pakistan, said an analyst at Trust Securities.

Also, positivity prevailed as Federal Minister for Information said that the Federal Cabinet has decided to constitute “Sarmaya Pakistan Company” to revive 193 state entities, running in loss and manage their affairs in an efficient manner.

On the news front, the country’s current account posted a $4.8 billion deficit during the first four months of FY19 mainly due to higher import bill and slow foreign inflows. The cement sector continued to attract investor’s interest on back of the news that the economic coordination committee (ECC) has given a free reign to cement industry barons and allowed them to increase prices, which will provide them an additional income of billions of rupees.

Mixed sentiments were witnessed as CHCC (+5%), LUCK (+1.91%) and PIOC (+1.39%) closed in the green whereas FCCL (-1.28%), MLCF (-1%) and DGKC (-0.21%) closed in the red zone. Crude oil prices recovered from the recent low in the international market, trading above $57.25/bbl where POL (+3.21%) and OGDC (+1.65%) closed in the green trajectory.

Activity remained on lower side Friday with 202 million shares traded compared to previous day’s volume of 255 million shares.

An equity analyst Maaz Mulla expects investor’s sentiment to remain positive and recommend investors to wait for further economic developments on PM’s next visit to UAE and Malaysia next week.

Published in Daily Times, November 17^th 2018.