Positivity staged a comeback at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as the benchmark KSE-100 Index increased 0.88% on Friday with volume of shares traded also inching higher.

At close, the KSE-100 finished with a gain of 234.77 points or 0.52% to finish at 45,675.87. On a weekly basis, the benchmark index lost 0.88%.

“The approval of two new bills by the Senate pertaining to the gas sector, 'Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2022' and 'Weighted Average Cost of Gas (WACOG) Bill', led SNGP, SSGC, OGDC, PPL and PSO to close in the green zone,” said Arif-Habib Limited in its post-market comment.

The upper house on Thursday passed the OGRA Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and WACOG bill.

The WAGOC Bill allows OGRA to charge weighted average on cost of indigenous gas and imported RLNG (re-gasified liquid natural gas) to consumers.

On the economic front, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) posted 11% growth during the first seven months of this fiscal year (FY22), amounting to $1.166 billion during July-Jan of FY22 compared to $1.048 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year (FY21), showing an increase of $119 million, reported State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

On the corporate front, ICI Pakistan executed a joint venture and shareholders agreement with Tariq Glass Industries Limited to set up a greenfield state-of-the-art float glass manufacturing facility, which would have a production capacity of up to 1,000 metric tons per day.

Sectors driving the benchmark index upwards included banking (46.16 points), fertiliser (40.87 points) and oil and gas marketing (34.04 points).

Volume on the all-share index increased to 194.05 million from 152.86 million on Thursday. The value of shares traded, however, declined to Rs4.31 billion from Rs4.78 billion recorded in the previous session.

Bank of Punjab was the volume leader with 60.30 million shares, followed by Soneri Bank with 13.36 million shares, and Telecard Limited with 11.10 million shares.

Shares of 333 companies were traded on Friday, of which 179 registered an increase, 131 recorded a fall, and 23 remained unchanged.