KARACHI: Pakistan Income Fund (PIF) of the Arif Habib Investments (AHI) has yielded a total return of 14.71 % in one year, justifying its growth of funds from Rs 250 million each and for PIF and Pakistan Stock Market Fund’s seed money, Rs 2.2 billion, which is managed by Arif Habib Investment Company (AHIC), at present.
The Chief Executive of AHI, Nasim Beg talking to reporters during an occasion marking AHI’s completion of its two funds, said the front line banks, investment banks and members of the Exchange and Business Groups (EBG) were the core investors in these products.
Total Funds under management have reached over Rs 2.2 billion with Rs 1.15 billion in PIF (the first and the largest debt fund of the country) and over Rs 435 million in PSM).
Talking about the achievements over the year, Nasim Beg also said that AHI had also launched an open-end mutual fund in collaboration with Metro Bank on Saturday, and named it as Pakistan Sovereign Fund with a core capital of Rs 250 million.
Nasim Beg also explained that Pakistan Premier Fund, which was previously known as KASB Premier Fund, was acquired from Khadim Ali Ali Shah Bukhari-closed end fund, with at least Rs 475 million fund at hand.
Nasim Beg said the product line of AHI includes Monthly Saving and Pension Plans, Monthly Income Plans and some innovative plans with unique features targeted towards small and large individual investors with different risk appetites and investment objectives. Selected branches of Bank Al-Habib, Standard Chartered Bank and Union Bank are the distributors for PSM, PIF and other investment plans, he added.
He said that over 270 centres were investment facilitators throughout the country. He said the funds were coming from different segments of the market like Bank Treasuries, blue chip companies and their retirement funds, trusts and associations and very importantly from individuals.
He claimed that PSM has had a strong correlation with KSE-100 Index however outperforming it for the most part.
Mr Beg said the basic reason of growth of the funds was attributed to the improved performance of the stock market in 2002. He maintained that the international measures against ‘Hundi/hawala,’ reforms in taxation laws and lowering of interests, forced the people to invest in capital markets.
He was looking forward of acquiring over a billion rupees available for investment in various modes, which were lying idle at present with EOBI and other institutions.
The Finance Ministry has just written a letter to various government and semi government institutions informing them that they can invest their funds in private institutions, which would help grow different funding sectors in coming days, he added.
He said initially the focus was on the urban masses besides overseas Pakistanis especially in Gulf States but soon the rural masses will also be attracted to invest here.
Responding to a question, Nasim Beg said last year COT (Carryover Transactions) markets, on average gave a yield of 14 % and now it was around six to seven per cent. He added that AHI kept on changing investment patterns according to their research and market movements due to which, there were not many disturbances.
About the stock market fluctuations, he said there was around Rs 10 billion speculative investment that has to be withdrawn soon. Speculative money or borrowed money can not stay for long and when it was withdrawn, it pulls the index three to four hundred points down, Mr Nasim remarked.
There is potential in the local capital market and without forecasting any time limit, Mr Nasim hoped it would go up to 12 multiple points which meant the index could go up 4500 points mark.
