Pakistan bourse closes in red over petroleum price hike

KARACHI: The Pakistan stocks witnessed a dull session on Wednesday and closed lower on weak economic outlook, surging local petroleum products prices and widening trade deficit.

“Surging local petroleum prices impacting industrial earnings, reports of falling cement sales amid the government cut in the development budgets and a raise in industrial power tariff played a catalyst role in the bearish close,” Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange KSE-100 shares Index shed 0.10 per cent, or 46.90 points, to close at 45,684.80 points. The KSE-30 shares Index shed 0.09 per cent, or 15.82 points, to close at 17,788.14 points.

As many as 339 scrips were active of which 135 advanced, 181 declined and 23 remained unchanged.

The ready market volumes stood at 145.3 million shares, compared with the turnover of 274.5 million shares in the last trading session.

An analyst at Pearl Securities said that the market witnessed a dull session today and moved both ways in the absence of any positive trigger.

“Investors remained cautious during the day on the back of uncertainty in domestic politics and concerns over Russia Ukraine conflict. Further, the government raised the petrol prices to record high levels which further threatened the participants’ interests,” he added.

Going forward, the analysts expect the market to take direction ahead of global and domestic political stability, and suggest investors adopt the “Sell on Strength” strategy in the ongoing week.

The companies that reflected the highest gains included Nestle Pakistan up Rs99.90 to close at Rs5,700/share, and Premium Textile up Rs54.01 to close at Rs784/share.

The companies which reflected the most losses included Rafhan Maize down Rs505 to close at Rs9,900/share, and Allawasaya Tex down Rs149.20 to close at Rs1,840.23/share.

The highest volumes were witnessed in K-Electric Ltd with a turnover of 23.64 million shares. The scrip gained 6 paisas to close at Rs3.59/share, followed by WorldCall Telecom with a turnover of 17.05 million shares. It gained 6 paisas to close at Rs2.02/share. Faysal Bank remained the third with a turnover of 10.13 million shares. The scrip gained 10 paisas to finish at Rs27/share.