KARACHI, July 24: Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) will hold a mega event in Dubai on September 22 this year to attract foreign fund managers to Pakistani stock market.

The Euromoney has planned this event on the sidelines of IMF and World Bank meetings which are scheduled for September in Dubai.

“We have decided to capitalize this event and hold a breakfast panel discussion on “Pakistani stock market” on September 22, 2003 in Dubai to attract the visiting foreign fund managers”, says KSE managing director Moin M. Fudda.

He said that Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz would deliver a keynote address on this occasion to highlight the salient features of Pakistani stock market and its unprecedented performance in the past couple of years.

Fudda said that the KSE had emerged as the best performing market in the world during the last one year and gained investors’ confidence, and foreign investors would feel comfortable coming to this market.

He was of the view that certain risk management measures taken during his tenure had stabilized the market and reduced the risk factor considerably.

“Now the small investors feel secured after the introduction of i) concept of capital adequacy, ii) exposure limits, iii) extension in the period of carry-over transaction (COT) financing (badla rates) for 10 days and iv) capping of rates. These steps have provided protection to KSE clearing house,” Moin Fudda said and added that these are the milestones of the KSE history.

He said the introduction of undisclosed trading had considerably stopped the speculation and windfall game for a few big players.

Now, there are 18 players including 14 institutions in the market and the monopoly of some players has ended, Fudda observed.

Responding to a question regarding the smaller base of the stock market and slow progress on account of listing, he said that floating of large public sector companies on stock exchange through privatization was necessary to broaden the base of stock market.

He said this process would take at least three to five years provided companies like OGDC, PIA, HBL, UBL, State Life are privatized and floated on stock market.

The market capitalization of the KSE must be about $50 billion while it was presently estimated at $14.5 billion, which is very narrow keeping in view the potential of our market,” Fudda noted.—APP