Bearish trend continues at Pakistan bourse

KARACHI: The Pakistan bourse witnessed downward pressure during early hours of Wednesday in response to Moody’s downgrading of Pakistan’s credit rating to Caa3 from Caa1, analysts said.

An analyst at Pearl Securities said further delays in reaching an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and an uncertainty pertaining to the elections further fuelled downward pressure.

“But the benchmark KSE-100 Index witnessed a recovery during the later hours of trading after the Supreme Court ordered elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to be held within 90 days.”

The benchmark KSE-100 Index closed at 40,412.77 points, down 97.6 points, or 0.24 per cent. The All-share volumes increased 33 per cent to 167 million shares against 126 million shares traded on Tuesday.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corporation said that the stocks fell across-the-board after Moody’s downgrade the ratings on local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt along with the ratings for senior unsecured MTN programme to Caa3.

“A record slump in the rupee and reports of 31.5 per cent YoY CPI inflation data for February 2023 ahead of the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting tomorrow (March 2, 2023) played a catalytic role in the bearish close.”

Going forward, the analysts expect volatility to persist in the benchmark KSE-100 index until the IMF’s ninth review is successfully concluded.

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