KARACHI, Jan 23: In the public offer of 5 per cent shares in Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC) through the stock exchanges, the 82,276 small investors had benefited to the tune of Rs1.6 billion , said the managing director of Karachi Stock Exchange, Moin M.Fudda.

He was speaking on the second day of the two-day "Marketing Conference of Pakistan, 2004 (MARCON) organized by the Marketing Association of Pakistan (MAP). The KSE MD termed the Rs1.6 billion as government's "Eid gift" to small savers in equities since the OGDC offer had come close to previous Eid.

He said that besides the proposed disinvestment of government equity in Sui Southern, Pakistan Petroleum, Kot Addu Power and others, some more applications had been received for new equity listings. These included an application from private airline "Blue Air" and a private TV channel.

The KSE MD recalled that in 2002, KSE had outperformed all the stock exchanges of the world, posting a gain of 112.20 per cent and in 2003, the KSE had risen another 65.53 per cent. He recounted economic reforms, corporate reforms and capital market reforms that had led to the continuing rally.

"The average dividend yield of listed companies is around 10 per cent, which is very attractive when compared to other stock exchanges of the world and the domestic Saving Deposit Schemes and T-Bills," contended Mr Fudda. He recommended medium to long term investment and asked investors in shares not to over stretch themselves and differentiate between need and greed.

He said that of the 3,500 people who walk into the KSE daily, 80 per cent are day traders. In respect of marketing, the KSE MD urged that Pakistan should be marketed by Pakistanis in a positive light. "We should be thankful for our bounties and count our blessings," he said.

The other speaker, Rafiq Rangoonwala, Chief Executive of Cupola Pakistan Limited stated that besides the associated franchises of Pizza hut, McDonalds; Subway; Nandos; Dunkin Donuts, there were other franchise concepts slated to enter Pakistan, including Dominos and Burger King. He recommended that fiscal policies in Pakistan should be conducive for franchising and brushed aside issues regarding franchising, which he termed as "disinformation".

These included matters relating to repatriation of profits; ownership of foreign franchises; usage of royalties against national and religious interest and the misinformation about 'Halal'. He argued that the owners; suppliers and workers were all Pakistanis.

He said that the franchises provided employment to thousands of people and quoted KFC as making annual sales in the region of Rs1 billion and contributing more than Rs100 million to the exchequer in GST alone.