Stocks Observer. com

By Muhammad Yasir KARACHI: The prolong gloom and doom at the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) has wiped out government’s revenue by around 87 percent at the end of first half of 2008-09 compared to the same period of previous fiscal year. According to the data made available to Daily Times, the Regional Tax Office (RTO) Karachi has witnessed sharp decline in tax collection from equity market on direct tax accounts. The overall tax generation stood Rs 241.866 million in 1HFY09 as compared with Rs 2.010 billion tax revenues collected in 1FY08 by RTO Karachi. The tax collection on the account of Withholding Tax (WHT) has been Rs 152.284 million during July-December 2008. RTO has received around Rs 1.045 billion taxes under the same account and in the corresponding period last fiscal, showing 85 percent reduction year-on-year basis. Only in December 2008, the same tax has been recorded Rs 217.146 million as compared with Rs 1.078 million in the same month of previous year, depicting almost 100

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue on Monday approved the Stock Exchanges (Corporatisation, Demutualisation and Integration) Bill, 2008. The representatives of nationwide bourses and small investors, who also turned up at the meeting, supported the government for early enactment of the bill. Karachi’s stock exchange was represented by Kamran Y Mirza, Adnan Afridi, Yaseen Lakhani and Zafar Moti, Lahore’s by Arif Saeed and Islamabad’s by Rashid Chughtai. Fauzia Wahab chaired the meeting. Earlier, an official of Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) briefed the committee on the bill. He said demutualisation would separate ownership from trading rights and improve governance by reducing malpractices. The official said the bill’s enactment would turn stock exchanges into public limited companies by shares and not by guarantees. He said members wouldn’t keep more than 40 percent shares, while the remaining ones would be sold to general public