Pakistan becomes Asia's third worst performing stock market

Islamabad, June 10: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), which had won the title of Asias best performing stock market in August 2020, took a U-turn and became the third worst performing market in the region amid the boiling political temperature and melting economy.

Investors witnessed the wipeout of 16.27 per cent (or 1.35 trillion PKR) of investment at the PSX, as market capitalisation (the total value of all listed companies) slumped to a multiyear low at 6.95 trillion PKR on Thursday, compared to the peak of 8.29 trillion PKR in June 2021, The Express Tribune reported.

The petroleum refinery was the worst-hit sector in terms of losing market capitalisation. The sector's capitalisation halved to 66 billion PKR in March, compared to 146.56 billion PKR at the end of June 2021.

The cement sector lost 24 per cent of market capitalisation while automobile assemblers' capitalisation went down 13 per cent during July-March FY22, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2021-22.

PSX became the third worst performing market in Asia after the benchmark KSE-100 index dropped 5.1 per cent (or 2,427 points) in the first nine months (July-March) of the outgoing fiscal year and closed at 44,929 points on March 31, The Express Tribune quoted the survey as saying.

The latest data suggests that the PSX has become the second worst performing market in the region after Sri Lanka in the entire current fiscal year (July-June FY22), it has been learnt.

PSX has dived almost 31 per cnet in dollar terms in the current fiscal year to date, according to Arif Habib Limited (AHL).

"Pakistan stock market's performance has posted a boom-and-bust situation during FY2022 (Jul-Mar) due to geopolitical tension, especially Russia-Ukraine conflict, and domestic political uncertainty," the survey said.