Pakistan stocks end in green as SBP gets IMF tranche

KARACHI: Pakistan stock ended in green on Thursday after the central bank received a tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) ended 42,460 points from previous day’s close of 42,351 points, showing an increase of 109 points.

Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market witnessed a positive session today as Pakistan received the first tranche of the extended fund facility from the International Monetary Fund.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) a day earlier received $1.16 billion from IMF under Extended Fund Facility.

SBP in a Tweet said that it had received proceeds of $1.16 billion (equivalent of SDR 894 million) after the IMF Executive Board completed the combined seventh and Eight review under the EFF for Pakistan.

“This will help improve SBP’s foreign exchange reserves and will also facilitate realization of other planned inflows from multilateral and bilateral sources,” according to the Tweet.

Earlier, on August 29, 2022 the executive board of the IMF completed the combined seventh and eighth reviews of the Extended Arrangement under the EFF for Pakistan.

Investors participation remained active throughout the day, healthy volumes were observed while the cement sector remained in the limelight.

Sectors contributing to the performance include Cements (+89.8 points), Banks (+19.5 points), Technology (+18.8 points), Leather (+10.8 points) and Investment Banks (+8.0 points).

Volumes increased from 181.3 million shares to 248.2 million shares (+36.9 per cent DoD). Average traded value also increased by 11.2 per cent to reach US$ 36.7 million as against US$ 33.0 million.

Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes are CNERGY, MLCF, FCCL, KAPCO and PRL.