KARACHI, June 20: The Karachi Stock market saw the KSE-100 drop by 15.81 points on Wednesday. It settled at 13,667.18 points.

The turnover was low at 47 million shares, 38 per cent down from 76 million shares traded on Tuesday.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp stated that the Pakistan stocks closed lower amid record low trades on cautious activity in blue chip stocks after the Supreme Court decision on PM.

Investors awaited announcements regarding nomination of new PM and KSE-100 index traded in narrow range despite recovery in global stocks and commodities.

Gas shortage for fertiliser sector, power crisis for industrial sector and circular debt issues in energy sector played a catalyst role in bearish sentiments at KSE.

Hasnain Asghar Ali, a market expert, observed that the political suspense and the approval of the budget that came after April 26 — the date from which Prime Minister ceases to hold office — were among those which certainly forced the market participants on the back foot.

Gloomy economic and financial issues, accompanied by the recent change in the political setup had, increased nervousness as depicted by substantial decline in turnover.

He suggested caution while carrying out selective accumulation.

"Low volume price erosion is likely to be witnessed in case winds of uncertainty continue to blow," the analyst said. Abdul Azeem at brokerage InvestCap observed that the KSE-100 index had moved in range-bound trend during the session with relatively low turnover.

However activity with volumes suggested that the index was still in consolidation phase. The trend suggested that the index was continuing to attract selling pressure above 13,750 points level.

Apart from the major event of disqualification of the Prime Minister, the news flow was mixed.

Some included Pakistan’s public debt to GDP ratio, reaching a `crisis level’ at 59.3 per cent by the end of June 2012.

The Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) Karachi faced with an uphill task of collecting a huge amount of Rs110 billion during the next 10 days to meet its revenue target fixed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) at Rs714 billion for the current fiscal year.

Eight Independent Power Producers (IPPs), namely Atlas, Halmore, Liberty, Nishat, Nishat Chunian, Orient, Saif, Sapphire, having filed a petition in Supreme Court for recovery of their outstanding dues amounting to around Rs62 billion. Two shipments of 80,000 tons of urea having arrived which would cover any shortage during Kharif-2012.

Agricultural credit disbursement by banks surged by 13.11 per cent on year-on-year basis to Rs255.027 billion in the first 11 months (July-May) of the current fiscal year (2011-12).

KSE-30 index fell by 17.07 points to 11,835.43 points.

In total of 344 actives, 144 stocks ended in the red and 114 stood as gainers.

Volume was down 38 per cent to 47 million shares on Wednesday, from 76 million shares traded the day earlier and trading value dropped 32 per cent to Rs1,735 billion, from Rs2,548 billion.

Market capitalisation slipped by Rs5 billion to Rs3.488 trillion, from Rs3.493 trillion.

Among actives, Jah.Sidd.Co declined by 14 paisa to Rs13.32 on 5m shares; DG Khan Cement was down 31 paisa to Rs40.03 on 3m shares, Hub Power Company lost 19 paisa to Rs41.80 on 3m shares, Lotte Pak PTA gained 22 paisa to Rs7.57 on 3m shares, Fauji Fertilizer Bin Qasim added 18 paisa to Rs41.11 on 2m shares, Engro Foods was up 10 paisa to Rs67.06 on 2m shares.