For the first time in decades, a concerned company of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) has reported that the total number of investors at the bourse stood at 252,322 by the end of April 2021, suggesting the comprehensiveness of the market.
The total number of investors, including 12,356 foreign individuals, accounts for around 0.12% of the population of Pakistan compared to 3.7% in India and 12.7% in China, it has been learnt.
The number of new investors has increased by 17,684 since the National Clearing Company of Pakistan (NCCPL) launched the facility of registering investors for the PSX through online account opening in November-December 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The increase in production by listed companies after they utilised cheaper financing available to them in the wake of a massive cut in benchmark interest rate also helped attract new investors to the bourse.
However, the growth in the number of new investors and the total number of investors are both insignificant considering the total size of the population.
An official, however, said it was the stockbrokers’ job to attract investors to the market. NCCPL reported that the total number of investors at the PSX increased by 17,684 (or 7.5%) in the past four months (January-April 2021) to 252,322.
NCCPL reported the number of investors for the first time on Wednesday. “The number (of new investors) has been growing consistently for the past six months,” NCCPL CEO Muhammad Lukman said while talking to The Express Tribune.
“There is an obvious reason for the consistent growth,” he said. “The number of investors is on the rise since the stock market became accessible to the whole nation (and the world) through the introduction of online account opening facility for investors.”
He recalled that earlier investors from only three major cities of the country ie Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore could enter the market through manual account opening and operating facility. Overseas Pakistanis are also opening investor accounts at the PSX through the Roshan Digital Account (RDA) initiative, he said.
NCCPL has opened around 3,778 accounts of non-resident Pakistanis through RDA, the data suggested.
“Awareness about investment opportunities (at the PSX) is on the rise. The number of investors, which stands low, will increase with the passage of time,” he hoped.
Hosting of webinars in December, January and February has increased knowledge about investment opportunities and attracted investors to the bourse.
The prime purpose of NCCPL is to provide ease of doing business and it has done so by offering the online account opening facility. Earlier, people faced hassle in opening accounts manually.
Replying to a question, he said there was no connection between the publication of data defining the total number of investors at the PSX and news stories about 31 families having influence at the PSX these days.
“There is no connection between the two. We did so since brokers were demanding the data for quite a long time.” NCCPL is the company which verifies data for the opening of accounts by investors with the PSX stockbrokers and allots UIN (unique identification number) to each accountholder. It has been doing so for the past 12 years.
NCCPL data suggests there are 232,799 individual investor accounts, 1,722 corporate companies’ investment accounts, 231 corporate and individual brokers’ investment accounts, 1,436 fund/other accounts, 12,356 foreigner individual accounts and 3,778 RDA accounts at the PSX at present.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 6th, 2021.
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