New $5 million surveillance system at Pakistani bourse to go live by March 2021 

KARACHI: A five-million-dollar state of the art trading and surveillance system, acquired from China, will go live by March 2021 at the Pakistan Stock Exchange, the PSX chief said on Wednesday, saying the program would increase transparency and the attractiveness of Pakistan’s best performing bourse for international investors. 
In November 2019, the Pakistan Stock Exchange signed a contract with Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) for the acquisition of a trading and surveillance system to bring the technological and operational systems of PSX at par with other stock exchanges around the world.
“The system acquired at the cost of around $5 million is in the process of implementation and is expected to come live by March next year,” Farrukh H. Khan, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Pakistan Stock Exchange told Arab News in an interview. “The implementation will also encourage and boost investors’ confidence because of the robustness of the system and effective surveillance”. 
“I am sure that increased transparency [through the] stronger surveillance framework and system in place as well as new products like options and index trading that will be available on Pakistan exchange, will continue to increase attractiveness for international investors from the Middle East to take the advantage of profitable opportunities in Pakistan,” Khan added.
In September 2020, the Pakistan Stock Exchange was declared the best Asian stock market and the fourth best-performing market across the world by marketcurrentswealthnet.com, a New York-based global financial markets research firm. 
The benchmark KSE 100 index dropped 25.61% in a month in April 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic broke out, touching a year’s low of 27,228.80. It has now improved by over 60% from its low and was trading at 43,735.33 on Thursday afternoon. 
“I think Pakistan took very proactive steps in terms of fiscal, monetary and very importantly social sector measures to stabilize the situation,” the PSX chief said, adding: “We took steps internally and improved and restored investors’ confidence that reflects in volumes [that] the market is one of the best performing markets in the world currently for 2020.” 
The PSX chief said the management’s decision that the market remain open and keep functioning during lockdown had played a crucial role in improving the performance of the capital market. 
Khan said major steps taken by Pakistan’s regulatory bodies had paved the way for the launch of Exchange Trading Funds (ETFs), and also opened the market for listing of new stocks after almost 15 months.
Pakistan now has four ETFS and has done three new listings while more than five are already in the pipeline. 
“We worked with SECP [Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan] and now have completed online account opening facility and its regulation are in place and systems will be in place by early Jan 2021,” the PSX chief said. “You can sit in the comfort of your home either in Pakistan or overseas and invest in the Pakistan stock market by opening an online account or through the Roshan Digital Account.” 
Pakistan’s economy nosedived to negative 0.4 percent in the outgoing fiscal year, but is expected to grow by around 2.5 percent this year. 
“Stock markets all over the world always anticipate; so they don’t look at what happened in the past, they look at what they feel is going to happen in future,” Khan said. “So if investors feel that things are under control and in the coming years the economy will perform better the stock market start performing.”
Khan said the PSX had recently launched the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) Board to enable and facilitate small and medium enterprises (SMEs), greenfield projects, tech start-ups and other companies to easily get listed on the exchange and access capital. 
“GEM is focused on SMEs whether from the tech or any other sector and we have made the regulation much simpler for companies to list on the GEM board rather than on the main board and their cost is also much lower,” Khan said. “We have got good interest so far and eight to ten companies are at different stages of discussion for listing”.