ISLAMABAD, April 30: Chairman Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan Raziur Rehman here on Monday advised the stock exchanges to open up their offices in Peshawar and Quetta keeping in view the rising demand for stock investments in those areas.

Speaking at a ceremony at ISE in which the Unified Trading System (UTS) of the Islamabad and Lahore stock exchanges became operational, the SECP chief said the commission was maintaining market data of the brokers and customers to check market manipulation.

The SECP’s mandate was to make the capital markets more and more efficient to safeguard the interest of the investors. The commission, therefore, endorsed the idea of joint trading of the two exchanges. He hoped that the UTS would be quite beneficial for the investing public.

He said in order to monitor the stock market and make it transparent different measures had been introduced from time to time. He appreciated the broker community’s cooperation for the implementation of the reforms.

The UTS was inaugurated by Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan.

The system has provided a common trading platform to the members of both bourses. Both the exchanges have been interlinked through radio link besides DSL and optic fibre as standby linkages. The latest technology of first ever nature has been used for the system.

Speaking on the occasion, Omar Ayub Khan lauded the untiring efforts of the LSE and ISE for materialising the system.