KARACHI: The national bourse ended the business week on a negative note even though the representative index opened on Friday in the green territory.

Arif Habib Ltd said the benchmark couldn’t sustain the momentum because of the news report saying Finance Minister Ishaq Dar cancelled his visit to Washington for spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Mr Dar was scheduled to attend the meetings from April 10 and see top IMF officials and multilateral creditors in a bid to secure stalled funding that Islamabad desperately needs to avert a balance-of-payments crisis.

The news story ignited negativity in the stock market as investors feared that the postponement of Mr Dar’s visit would further delay the release of the IMF loan tranche.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 40,049.65 points, down 301.24 points or 0.75 per cent from the preceding session.

The overall trading volume decreased 21.1pc to 135.1 million shares. The traded value went down 37.6pc to $11.3m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included JS Bank Ltd (26.2m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (13.1m shares), Silkbank Ltd (10.1m shares), The Organic Meat Company Ltd (7.3m shares) and Telecard Ltd (5.8m shares).

Sectors contributing negatively to the index performance were exploration and production (96.7 points), fertiliser (56.7 points), technology and communication (29.8 points), cement (26.6 points) and power generation and distribution (24.3 points).

Companies registering the biggest increases in their share prices in absolute terms were Sapphire Fibres Ltd (Rs27.88), Pakistan Services Ltd (Rs10.47), Sitara Chemical Industries Ltd (Rs8), Ellcot Spinning Ltd (Rs7.57) and JDW Sugar Mills Ltd (Rs7.27).

Companies that recorded the biggest declines in their share prices in absolute terms were Nestle Pakistan Ltd (Rs126.87), Siemens Pakistan Engineering Ltd (Rs40), Pakistan Tobacco Company Ltd (Rs18.53), Premium Textile Mills Ltd (Rs13.85) and Mari Petro­leum Company Ltd (Rs12.85).

Foreign investors were net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.84m.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2023