LONDON: British magazine The Economist has praised the privatisation policy of the government and stock market growth.
Praising the privatization policy of the government and stock market growth, the newspaper in an article said that since the start of 2012 MSCI’s index of Pakistani shares has risen by 60% in dollar terms-ahead of global indices as well as Pakistan’s peers among frontier markets, which are less liquid and less open to foreign capital than others.
It said foreigners’ interest picked up after elections in May last year which led to the country’s first ever handover from one civilian government to another and the new one was seen as friendlier to business.
The paper said that despite facing a number of problems, Pakistan is almost mid-table in the World Bank’s international comparison of the “ease of doing business”, scoring higher than either Brazil or India.It said that Pakistan’s listed firms have a handsome average return on equity of more than 25 percent.