KARACHI: Bulls retur­ned to the stock market on Monday after clarity emer­ged on budgetary measures that the government annou­nced last Friday, said Arif Habib Ltd.

The new measures include the imposition of a 10 per cent super tax for tax year 2022 on large corporations ope­r­ating in 13 specific sectors.

Sentiments were lifted also because investors expec­ted the International Monet­ary Fund was about to send a draft of the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, paving the way for an early disbursement of the loan tranche.

Moreover, shares performed better on the return of some semblance of stability to the currency market following the reports that Saudi Arabia will approve a deferred oil payment facility of $3.6 billion.

The KSE-100 index settled at 41,878.57 points, up 826.78 points or 2.01pc from a day ago.

The trading volume decr­ea­sed 41.5pc to 247.9 million shares while the traded value went down 42.4pc to $35.5m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric Ltd (32m shares), Treet Corporation Ltd (19.9m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (14.4m shares), Pakistan Refinery Ltd (13.3m shares) and TPL properties Ltd (11.5m shares).

Sectors that contributed the highest number of points to the benchmark index included commercial banking (182.17 points), fertiliser (96.84 points), cement (93.3 points), technology and communication (85.01 points) and oil and gas exploration (80.67 points).

Shares contributing most positively to the index included Mari Petroleum Company Ltd (65.45 points), Fauji Fertiliser Company Ltd (55.28 points), Systems Ltd (50.52 points), MCB Bank Ltd (46.23 points) and Habib Bank Ltd (43.73 points).

Stocks that contributed most negatively to the index included Oil and Gas development Company Ltd (6.82 points), Dawood Hercules Corporation Ltd (5.85 points), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (2.69 points), Shakarganj Ltd (2.12 points) and Interloop Ltd (1.56 points).

Foreign investors were net buyers as they purchased shares worth $0.46m.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2022