KARACHI: Share prices rose on Thursday on the acknowledgement received from the International Monetary Fund’s country representative with regard to significant progress on the contents of the federal budget for 2022-23, said Topline Securities.

According to Arif Habib Ltd, the rally in share prices took place as a consortium of Chinese banks agreed to a $2.3 billion loan facility agreement, which resulted in the rupee’s recovery against the dollar.

Moreover, trading volumes remained healthy across the board. Listed independent power producers were in the limelight as the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet approved the payment of Rs149bn for the power sector.

The KSE-100 index settled at 42,716.97 points, up 258.83 points or 0.61pc from a day ago.

The trading volume increased 31.3pc to 349.5 million shares while the traded value went up 19.7pc to $48.9m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Cnergyico PK Ltd (37.4m shares), Pakistan Refinery Ltd (29.34m shares), K-Electric Ltd (27.96m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (15.63m shares) and TPL Properties Ltd (14m shares).

Sectors that contributed the highest number of points to the benchmark index included power generation and distribution (74.8 points), commercial banking (52.17 points), technology and communication (26.42 points), oil and gas marketing (25.86 points) and refinery (16.72 points).

Shares contributing most positively to the index included Hub Power Com­pany Ltd (49.44 points), Bank AL Habib Ltd (29.08 points), MCB Bank Ltd (27.13 points), Systems Ltd (19.18 points) and Pakistan State Oil Company Ltd (16.53 points).

Stocks that contributed most negatively to the index included Habib Bank Ltd (26.2 points), Fauji Fertiliser Company Ltd (16.72 points), Pakistan Oilfields Ltd (11.01 points), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (7.72 points) and Abbott Labo­ratories Ltd (6.08 points).

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2022