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Friday March 29, 2024

Stocks roll ahead on Tarin cues

By Our Correspondent
May 07, 2021

Stocks stayed the gaining course on Thursday cheering the finance minister’s assurance the government would not increase power tariff and impose new taxes in the upcoming budget, dealers said.

Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) KSE-100 Shares Index gained 0.51 percent or 231.06 points to close at 45,174.67 points.

Topline Securities in its daily market review said the index continued its momentum drawing strength from Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin’s statement that Pakistan would request IMF there was no room to increase power tariff and taxes and reiterated his stance on focus toward growth. Major contribution to the index came from LUCK, TRG, BAFL, PAKT and KAPCO, as they cumulatively added 162 points to the index, the brokerage said.

KSE-30 Shares Index gained 0.47 percent or 86.89 points to close at 18,469.87 points.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said stocks closed bullish led by oil, autos, and cement scrips on strong oil sales and cement offtake data for April and Finance Minister’s ruling out further tariff hike and new taxes.

He said mid-session pressure remained on rupee instability and 21.6 percent surge in trade deficit to $23.8 billion for July-April.

However, higher global crude prices, falling government bond yields, and speculations on payment to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) kept the stocks gaining, Mehanti added.

As many as 358 scrips were active of which 231 advanced, 110 declined and 17 remained unchanged.

The ready market volumes stood at 245.64 million shares compared with the turnover of 259.86 million shares in the last trading session.

Brokerage Arif Habib Limited said the market got off to a positive start and after sustaining a short dip of 54 points bounced back to close the session on a strong note.

Cement, fertiliser, refinery and technology stocks kept the interest alive and despite a long vacation investors took a long bet, the brokerage said in its report.

Trading volumes were somewhat off main board; however, regardless of the recent onslaught suffered by TRG Pakistan and Netsol, buying interest brought the prices of pertinent stocks up generating considerable interest, it added.

Neelam Naz at JS Global Capital said KSE-100 Index closed in the positive zone with a gain of +231 points. Major contributors to the index were banking sector and Independent Power Producers (IPP) sector shares, she said.

“Going forward, the outlook of the market will mainly depend on the Covid situation during the holidays and if government is able to curtail the positivity ratio,” Naz added.

A day earlier, addressing his first press conference in Islamabad after assuming the charge as finance minister, Tarin said: "Pakistan has not yet come out of the IMF programme, we have discussed with them and told them that our revenues were increasing at 92 per cent but the third wave of Covid came and they decreased after that." "At this time, we don't have the capacity to increase tariffs or [adopt] incremental taxes, our common man is completely fed up of this inflation," he said, adding that this had a cascading effect and inflation would increase once fuel charges were increased.

Bata Pakistan, rising by Rs110 to close at Rs1,790/share, and Pakistan Tobacco, strengthening Rs85 to close at Rs1,390/share posted best gains.

Gatron Industries, losing Rs27.25 to close at Rs511.75/share, and Mari Petroleum, shedding Rs16.38 to end at Rs1,503.38/share, were the worst hit stocks of the day.

Being the volume leader Worldcall Telecom nailed the highest turnover of 80.89 million shares, followed by TRG Pakistan with 14.80 million shares, and Telecard Limited recording 12.79 million shares.