KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) this month is going to launch a new trading system acquired from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), the burse’s chief executive has said.
The SZSE is one of China’s three stock exchanges — along with Shanghai Stock Exchange, and China Financial Futures Exchange — that hold a 40 percent stake in the PSX.
The PSX signed a $5 million contract with SZSE in November 2019 for the acquisition of Trading and Surveillance System to improve its operational and technological level. It was first scheduled to be implemented in March 2021.
“We expect to launch within the month of October. There were certain requirements that our stakeholders had requested to accommodate in the trading system which now have been implemented,” PSX chief executive Farrukh H. Khan told Arab News earlier this week.
The system is expected to make the PSX more transparent and attractive.
“The system will vastly improve the capabilities of our trading and abilities to introduce new products like options,” Khan said. “We’ll have a proper surveillance system and the robustness of the much better system.”
The bourse’s benchmark KSE 100 index dropped 25.61 percent in April 2020 and touched the year’s lowest 27,228.80 level. The index recouped some of the losses in later months.
Pakistan’s bourse was declared Asia’s best stock market and the world’s fourth best performing market in 2020 by Market Currents, a New York-based financial markets research firm.
However, last month Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) downgraded PSX from its Emerging Market Index (EMI) to Frontier Markets Index (FMI), following a continuous drop in share prices of its listed companies.
In 2017, benchmark KSE 100 had peaked to 53,000 points level with market capitalization of $100 billion. However, market capitalization has dropped over the years to $45 billion including 17 percent decline in last four months.
“This (downgrading) was mainly due to the size of the market capitalization which has declined,” Khan said. “Rising oil prices, which doubled in recent days, Afghanistan’s situation, interest rate hike and rupee remained under pressure and MSCI reclassification generally has created negative impacts in equity market.”
“Pakistan’s stock market has given average 19 percent return in dollar terms during last 20 years,” Khan said.
Pakistan’s stock market recorded growth earnings of 60 percent last year.
This Friday, the PSX KSE 100 closing level was 44,821.53.
Pakistan Stock Exchange to launch new trading system this month
https://arab.news/83mbf
Pakistan Stock Exchange to launch new trading system this month
- PSX acquired trading and surveillance system from Shenzhen Stock Exchange
- Pakistan stock market’s capitalization has dropped from $100 billion in 2017 to $45 billion
Hundreds of migrants, including Pakistanis, land in Greece after search operation at sea
- Rescued migrants were taken to a temporary facility on Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini
- Greece has made deportations of rejected asylum seekers a priority under its migration policy
ATHENS: Greece’s Coast Guard rescued about 540 migrants from a fishing boat off Europe’s southernmost island of Gavdos on Friday, one of the biggest groups to reach the country in recent months.
The migrants were found during a Greek search operation some 16 nautical miles (29.6 km) off Gavdos, a Coast Guard statement said. They are all well and are being taken to a temporary facility on the nearby island of Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini, a Coast Guard official said, adding most of the migrants were men from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan.
In a separate incident on Thursday, the EU’s border agency Frontex rescued 65 men and five women from two migrant boats in distress off Gavdos, the Greek Coast Guard said.
Greece was on the front line of a 2015-16 migration crisis when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa landed on its shores before moving on to other European countries, mainly Germany.
Flows have ebbed since then, but both Crete and Gavdos — the two Mediterranean islands nearest to the African coast — have seen a steep rise in migrant boats, mainly from Libya, reaching their shores over the past year and deadly accidents remain common along that route.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy will be eligible for help in dealing with migratory pressures under a new EU mechanism when the bloc’s pact on migration and asylum enters into force in mid-2026.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said deportation of rejected asylum seekers will be a priority.
