November 5, 2003	Wednesday	Ramazan 9, 1424

ISLAMABAD, Nov 4: Twenty more listed companies have announced their decision to join the National Clearing and Settlement System (NCSS) from Wednesday (Nov 5).

This raises the total number of listed companies opting to join the NCSS to 351, NCSS spokesman stated here on Tuesday.

Among the new entrants are 18 textile companies, a securities and a paper products company.

The new members of the NCSS are: AKD Securities & Safe Deposit Company Ltd, Pakistan Paper Products Ltd, Liberty Mills Ltd, Artistic Denim Mills Ltd, The Burewala Textile Mills Ltd, Quetta Textile Mills, Shams Textile Mills Ltd, Towellers Ltd, Al-Qadir Textile Mills Ltd, Fazal Cloth Mills Ltd, Glamour Textile Mills Ltd, Haji Mohammad Ismail Mills Ltd, Janana De Malucho Textile Mills Ltd, Paramount Spinning Mills Ltd, Premium Textile Mills Ltd, Resham Textile Industries Ltd, Shahzad Textile Mills Ltd, Taha Spinning Mills Ltd, Nakshbandi Industries Ltd and Lawrencepur Woollen & Textile Mills Ltd.

The share transactions of the companies, which have listed themselves with the CDC-managed NCSS, are settled transparently through electronic settlement and online payments.

The NCSS, it may be noted, is being operated by the Central Depository Company of Pakistan Limited.

To ensure optimum performance of the system, the company keeps incurring capital expenditure to upgrade hardware and software requirements of NCSS from time to time.