0
ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: Pakistan is expecting very shortly around $250 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) under the “capacity building for capital market and corporate governance programme.”
“This can go up to $300 million depending on the discussions but at the moment we expect an amount of $250 million,” Khalid Mirza, the chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) told Dawn here on Tuesday.
The ADB consultants were here recently and finalized a study. They would undertake another study and then develop contours of the programme defining various steps and measures. This would be followed by discussions with authorities in Pakistan and then the approval process, said Mr Mirza expecting the whole process being completed in not more than six months.
He said that outcome of first phase of the capital market reforms was very encouraging.
NBP PRIVATIZATION: To a question, Mr Mirza said the SECP had approved the prospectus of National Bank of Pakistan for the sale of its 5 per cent shares through stock market.
He said the government perhaps wanted to hold back the sale of shares till end-November because of post-September 11 situation, but he (Mirza) believed that current situation was the right time to list the NBP shares at stock market in view of a bullish trend.
The government had decided to offer initially five per cent but up to 10 per cent of government shares in NBP to the general public through stock market at Rs10 par value. In all, 18.5 million shares (5 per cent) of NBP would now be given through a minimum subscription of 1,000 shares lot each.
National Clearance and Settlement System: The SECP chairman said that Lucky Cement and Bank of Punjab had been shortlisted by the SECP to be traded through national clearance and settlement system to start with and other companies would be added gradually. The system has, however, been delayed for two weeks due to some technical deliberations at Karachi Stock Exchange.
The SECP chairman said that a positive movement in the stock market was due for quite some time because it had been under bearish trend for a long time.
However, he said that this was not really a speculative bubble through over-trading like May 2000. He said the SECP was watching the situation very carefully, but there was no need to take any step in the near future.
He said that market was improving quickly because the yields were extremely high and investors were earning dividends. At the same time fund managers have started looking at Pakistan and expatriate Pakistanis have started bringing money, dollar rate is falling and institutions have come in.
The SECP, said the chairman, was now emphasising on futures instead of badla transactions. He said that a committee had been set up to discourage the blank sale as it was not acceptable.
