December 17, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 12, 1423

LAHORE, Dec 16: All the stock exchanges of the country are switching over the carryover trade to other modes like margin-financing and future trading under a three-phase programme.

“To begin with, the stock exchanges have been asked to restrict the carryover trade only in 30 scrips,” chief executive officer, Lahore Stock Exchange, Samir Ahmad, told APP on Monday.

Referring to the decisions of Stock Exchanges Coordination Committee held in Karachi on Saturday, he said LSE had already brought down the number of scrips dealing in carryover trade to 35 in December 2001. “About 15 per cent of LSE’s trade has gone on internet with the provision of 53 trading terminals to bourse’ members outside the LSE building,” he said.

He said LSE had increased the availability of bandwidth from the previous level of 120K to 512K.

The LSE chief said the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) had prepared a software to carry out a trade surveillance in a bid to check illegal trading and other problems.

“This software will be provided free of cost by the SECP to the bourses,” Samir Ahmad said.

He said the coordination committee also reviewed the process of providing internet-based trading terminals to the members outside the stock exchanges building to help broaden the base of the stock market in Pakistan under the Asian Development Bank’s reforms package.

He said the Karachi meeting also reviewed the process for the delisting of the companies besides presenting the procedures for the buy-back of the shares by the company.—APP