KARACHI: The Pakistan bourse witnessed a dull session with range-bound activities packed with the Pakistan-IMF talks, quarterly results announcements, higher energy prices, and dollar hedging northwards, dealers said on Monday.

“The IMF has placed a condition on Pakistan to transfer all the bank accounts maintained by [the] public sector entities/Defence Ministry to [the] State Bank of Pakistan (SBP),” an analyst at Pearl Securities said.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange KSE-100 shares index shed 0.35 per cent, or 160.16 points, to close at 45,418.20 points. The KSE-30 shares index shed 0.51 per cent, or 92.61 points, to close at 17,779.19 points.

As many as 320 scrips were active, of which 155 advanced, 147 declined and 18 remained unchanged. The ready market volumes stood at 165.9 million shares, compared with the turnover of 300.6 million shares in the last trading session.

Cumulatively, the banking and cement sectors eroded 161 points from the index during the session.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corporation said that the stocks closed bearish on uncertainty over the outcome of the Pakistan-IMF talks for the release of EFF tranche.

“Reports of [the] IMF seeking government’s banking deposits in SBP treasury single account pressured the banking sector. Foreign outflows, [the] rupee instability and concerns for [the] ongoing political noise played a catalytic role in [the] bearish close.”

An analyst at Topline Securities said a lackluster session was observed at the bourse. “Higher international oil prices coupled with [the] concerns over the inflationary pressures kept the market in check.”

Volumes remained extremely low after the introduction of the new PSX trading system, which witnessed its first day live trading. The volume leader was Hum Network with 50.757 million shares exchanging hands, as the company notified the exchange that they have received a public announcement of intention by Duraid Qureshi to acquire up to 35.15 per cent of the total issued paid-up capital of the company.

Major volume leaders of the day included WorldCall Telecom with 17 million shares, Bank of Punjab (BoP) with 10 million shares and TRG Pakistan, contributing 5 million shares in the day’s turnover.

Going forward, analysts expect the market to remain volatile in the ongoing rollover week, and recommend investors to keep booking profits at a higher level.