20 January 2004	Tuesday	27 Ziqa'ad 1424

LAHORE, Jan 19: From Thursday onwards almost all the settlement of trades executed at stock exchanges will be done through the National Clearing & Settlement System (NCSS) as against separate clearing & settlement previously carried out by the individual clearing houses of the three stock exchanges.

This was stated by Central Depository Company (CDC) chief executive Hanif Jakhura in a news release issued here on Monday. He said the CDC had inducted 35 new securities to the NCSS after the successful implementation of the Broker-to-Broker Delivery System (BTB) and Institutional Delivery System (IDS) since Jan 5.

BTB is devised to facilitate transactions between members of different stock exchanges while IDS is used to settle trades (COT) between brokers and financial institutions.

Mr Jakhura said the CDC had contributed immensely to rise in volume of trading at the stock exchanges to 308 million shares in 2003 from merely 30 million in 1996.