Feeling undervalued

摘要

The world's best-performing stock-market in 2002 is about to put on weight. The sale to the public, from November loth, of up to 5% of the shares in the state-owned Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) will lift the total capitalisation of the Karachi Stock Exchange by about 10%, to about $20 billion. This highlights three truths about Pakistan's economy: there has been a stock-market boom; there is a government committed to liberalising reform, including privatisation; but the market and the economy remain too small for anybody outside Pakistan to care very much. This irks the technocratic finance team in the government installed by General Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless military coup four years ago. They point to likely economic growth of over 5% this year and next, subdued inflation and nearly a year's imports-worth of foreign-exchange reserves. They feel cocky enough to want to repay early some loans from development banks and want to take Pakistan-a financial pariah as recently as 1998-99-back to the international bond market in the next few months.