South Asia Investor Review

The KSE-100 closed at an all-time high of 14829.58, continuing the bullish trend after February 18 elections. The buying was spurred by hopes raised by the announcement of PPP and PML(N) agreeing on forming a coalition government. According to Pakistan's Financial Daily "Business Recorder", the overall market capitalization reached an all time high of Rs 4.606 trillion with a net increase of Rs 41 billion. Healthy trading activity was seen at the share market as the market volume significantly increased to 397.695 million shares as compared to 359.151 million shares traded a day earlier. The futures market turnover however slightly declined to 51.615 million shares against 56.592 million shares previously. The rally witnessed strong institutional buying coupled with foreign buying. The strong earnings announcements brought buyers in the share market. The investors' expectations for better political situation in days ahead encouraged them to take fresh positions. There...

Telecom sector is attracting the largest share of foreign direct investment in Pakistan. Foreign investors pumped in $364m into it during July-Sept 2007 quarter, according to the latest figures released by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority. The total FDI in Pakistan for this 3-month period was $962.5m. The number of cellular subscribers in Pakistan has crossed 76m in Dec, 2007, from 500,000 in 2004. According to Business Recorder, Pakistan's financial daily, most forecasters believe that the upward trend will continue in the next 5 years because of the huge market potential, particularly in the rural areas where the build-out has yet to happen. Opreators such as Wateen (with Motorola) are planning a large Wimax roll-out to improve voice and high bandwidth data access across the country. The biggest mobile operators in Pakistan include Mobilink with 30m subscribers, Ufone with 16m, Telenor with 14m, Warid with 13m and Paktel with 1m. It must be noted that FDI is different from s...