ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: The facility provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission in May last to place their quarterly accounts on their websites has so far been availed of only by 137 out of 700 listed companies.

Under the law, these companies are required to mail their quarterly accounts to each shareholder which involves a huge expenditure and enormous time, SEC Commissioner Abdul Rehman Qureshi told Dawn here Wednesday.

The SEC had decided to exempt the companies from the laborious exercise to mail these accounts every quarter to all the shareholders. For this purpose, October 15, 2003, had been announced as the deadline. These companies, however, need to send their quarterly accounts to the SEC and stock exchanges.

As of December 31, 2003, however, a very small percentage of listed companies had put their quarterly accounts on their respective websites. This concession, Qureshi added, was one of the measures adopted by the SECP to facilitate the companies. Earlier, he recalled, it allowed their boards of directors to hold their meetings through the latest technology of video-conferencing.