The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) maintained an upward trend with the KSE-100 Index climbing over 800 points during the intraday trading on Monday.
The market opened on a positive note and the benchmark index gained over 700 points at 9:30 am and crossed the 72,000 level.Â
At 2:00 pm, the KSE-100 Index touched day’s highest level of 73060.74 by gaining over 1100 points.
At day close, the index settled at 72764.24 points, up by 862.15 or 1.2% from previous close of 71902.09 points.
This positive market momentum was mainly fueled by investor optimism about a prospective agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and decreasing inflation rates.
The latest data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) indicates an year-on-year (YoY) 17.3% decline in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April 2024.
This figure represents a drop from the previous month’s 20.7% YoY and a decrease from April 2023’s 36.4% YoY.
Investors actively bought stocks across various sectors, including automobiles, cement, chemicals, commercial banks, and oil and gas exploration companies.
An International Monetary Fund mission is expected to visit Pakistan this month to discuss a new programme, the lender said on Sunday ahead of Islamabad beginning its annual budget-making process for the next financial year.
Pakistan last month completed a short-term $3 billion programme, which helped stave off sovereign default, but the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has stressed the need for a fresh, longer-term programme.
