KARACHI, Dec 16: ABAMCO Limited has announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan had authorized its open-ended scheme — the UTP-Islamic Fund, which was registered on Monday in the afternoon.

“This is the first and the only open-ended Islamic Fund, which is being launched by ABAMCO Limited before the end of December 2002,” the company said, adding that it would be the third open-ended Mutual Fund of ABAMCO.

ABAMCO stated that it was the first and the largest asset management company in the private sector in Pakistan. It managed Rs3.5 billion in assets on behalf of provident, pension and gratuity funds, welfare organizations, insurance companies, banks, non-banking financial institutions and thousands of individual investors.

ABAMCO has been managing mutual funds for over 7 years. It launched its first fund, the BSJS Balanced Fund in August, 1995. Its second fund, the Unit Trust of Pakistan, is an open-ended fund launched in October 1997. The third fund, UTP-income Fund was launched in August 2002. ABAMCO has also acquired the management of Lot “A” of ICP mutual funds. With this acquisition, it has 15 mutual funds under its management.

The asset management company stated that over the last five years, ABAMCO had returned an average of 18.78 per cent per year to its investors in its flagship fund, UTP and 19.77 per cent in BBF. Both the funds had been awarded AA(f) rating by PACRA.