The vision of the government and the finance minister was adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).He said the emergence of a single, national capital market will create a large liquidity pool through which scores of brokers shall be able to better serve existing and prospective investors throughout the country.
The concurrent provision of the Exchange's new Internet Trading Platform named KITS will enable brokerage houses to provide their clients with real-time services without the need for large IT infrastructure. In turn, this shall enable the rise of small and medium-sized brokers that are highly focused on core business functions such as client acquisition and equity sales.
In tandem, the SECP continues to play a highly supportive role for the creation of Capital Market Hubs across the country. Resultantly, the people of major cities as well as other parts of the country will enjoy greater access to the capital markets. He said that at present, there are 555 companies listed on these exchanges with a total market capitalisation of US $67 billion as of December 23, 2015. The investors on the exchanges include 1,886 foreign institutional investors and 883 domestic institutional investors along with about 0.22 million retail investors.
There are also about 400 brokerage houses which were members of the three stock exchanges as well as 21 asset management companies. As an amalgamation of all these invaluable attributes, the PSX represents a quantum leap forward for the country's capital market.