Karachi: As the political situation of the country remains uncertain amidst the JIT investigation into the Prime Minister’s family, Pakistan rupee fell sharply both in the interbank and kerb market to reach a 2.5 year high of Rs108 from Rs104.91 Tuesday. The PKR has remained relatively stable since August 2015, and according to a Topline Security report, the currency has devalued annually by 5 percent in the last decade or so.
Aside from this development, the Pakistani Stock Exchange initially surged by 962 points, or nearly 2 percent of its capitalisation, before coming down to 300-plus around noon, during intra-day trading, despite that the Prime Minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz is under investigation by the JIT.
On Wednesday, trading had started on a negative note with the benchmark index losing 242 points to reach 45,152.63 points. Shortly afterwards, the index rallied back to register gains of 962 points to reach 46,356.78 points.
Till the filing of this report, the market was trading at 45,702.91 points falling 653.87 points from its intraday high of 46,358.78 points. The engineering sector led the trading activity with 19.3m shares traded during the day.
The devaluation of the rupee helped the oil and gas exploration, power (IPPs) and textile sector shares to surge; their impact also assisted in improving the overall sentiment in the capital market.
