PSX holds gong ceremony for onboarding PKIC

KARACHI: The Pak-Kuwait Investment Company (PKIC) has been added to the list of market makers for debt securities at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) and an agreement to this effect was signed on Tuesday.

PSX managing director and chief executive officer Farrukh H Khan and PKIC managing director Mubashar Maqbool signed the agreement. A gong ceremony was also held to mark the event.

Farrukh Khan said that the growth of the debt market was an important strategic objective of the bourse and was really critical for the economic growth of Pakistan.

“The huge initiative we have on the housing sector right now, the kind of scale the lending of the housing sector has to grow, the banking sector balance-sheet cannot do that, unless they are able to refinance themselves from the capital market, as they do all over the world.”

“Unless we develop the debt capital market, many of the key objectives of the economic growth of social policy, as well as banks’ own growth will not happen in an efficient manner.”

A number of debt listings have taken place regularly on [the] PSX, Sukuks particularly such as K-Electric, Bank Islami, Bank Alfalah and the PHL (Power Holding Limited) Sukuk, which was a truly landmark issue, as it was first debt offering done in Pakistan on a book building basis,” he added.

The PSX managing director urged the investors to work with the bourse either in terms of their own Sukuks or advising and working with the clients and exploring publicly listed book building offerings.

Mubashar Maqbool said PKIC is the largest development finance institution (DFI) in Pakistan.

“In addition to its development work, infrastructure finance and project finance, we are pioneers in many new markets. PKIC was the first to develop Islamic finance in Pakistan and Meezan Bank was set up in Pak Kuwait’s premises.”

“Pak-Kuwait is one of the founding shareholders of the NCCPL [National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited], which is the backbone of [the] PSX, and recently this new professional clearing member, e-Clear which provides clearing, custody and margin financing services to non-clearing members. We are one of the pioneering shareholders,” he added.

Maqbool also said that PKIC also invested in fintech and brought a very unique project through Kuwaiti sponsors, “Which is Pakistan’s first independent water producer (IWP) project.”

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