KARACHI: The caretaker Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar asked the Pakistan Stock Exchange to provide a road map for capital market development in the next four days, which she said could be worked upon and later handed over to the next government.

The minister was speaking at the PSX which she visited on Saturday afternoon to brief the participants about the state of the economy. Ms. Shamshad also stressed that the bourse should assist in development of the capital market and capital formation.

The minister stressed that the exchange should redouble its efforts for attracting Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) from the private sector.

The finance minister asserted that there were lots of positives in the country’s market like encouraging consumer spending amidst growing investment demand. She said that the PSX was operating at a discount of almost 20pc from its peak but was attractive with dividend yield at KSE-100 index which now stands at over 5pc, which was much better than the prevailing 2pc yield in the regional. She asserted that the fundamentals of the Pakistan stocks were strong.

The minister defended the PSX underperformance and reminded attendees that it was mainly due to the political events in the last 9-10 months.

However, in comparison to valuation in all regional markets there was nothing to be too worried for the markets such as China,Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had also suffered a fall of 15-25pc.

Moreover, our average price-earning multiples now stood at 8 against other regional markets where the multiples were much higher.

Other than the stock market, the finance minister dealt at length on the macroeconomic indicators. She said that Pakistan might have to approach IMF post elections. However it was not necessarily a bad thing to ensure stability. Pakistan has the capability to negotiate with IMF and has the right experts.”Despite challenges Pakistan has a great potential to overcome any IMF related challenges”, said Ms Akhtar.

She laid out the figures of FY2018 fiscal analysis stating that the FY2018 Fiscal deficit had exceeded target by 2.7pc of GDP for which the Minister gave several reasons.

She also highlighted the caretaker governments economic strategy for growth and stabilisation.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2018