Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Wednesday said with 18 percent profit, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained the ‘most profitable’ among the world’s markets.
The companies listed at the PSX paid around Rs272 billion dividend to their shareholders in 2020, while that profit touched the mark of Rs498 billion in 2021, he wrote in a tweet.
The minister also tweeted the list of companies at the PSX showing remarkable growth in the dividends paid during the last two years.
Mid 2021 gave a brief reprieve from the pandemic, allowing the Pakistani government to postpone future large-scale lockdowns until the second and third waves of the pandemic. Was there a total return to pre-lockdown levels because of this? Without a doubt, the period of relief following the first wave resulted in a strong recovery for residents.
The recovery, however, has been incomplete. Around 3 million residents were unable to reclaim their occupations a quarter after the initial wave of lockdowns ended and average income remained 5.5 percent below pre-lockdown levels in November 2020.
This can be problematic for two reasons. First, available data does not account for the impact of the second and third waves’ lockdowns. The improvements gained during the period of respite are likely to have been hampered or reversed because of these lockdowns. Second, an incomplete recovery a quarter after the first wave of lockdowns ended raises fears that structural unemployment has risen.
