Pakistan – Heaven for Stock Market Manipulators and Graveyard for Public

1.      The public in Pakistan has long been facing two types of dacoits. One type represents those who snatch mobiles, cars, and bikes, while the other type represents dacoits who use fake information to manipulate financial markets like PSX (these can be termed as white-collar dacoits).

2.      The public neither has personal means to safeguard against mobile snatchers nor the intellectual capacity to stay cautious of white-collar dacoits.

3.      On June 6, 2024, a random financial journalist tweeted that income tax on capital gains and dividends was expected to be brought at par with slab-based income tax rates applicable to individuals and corporates. This apparently proved disastrous for the PSX-100, which went down by more than 2000 points on June 7, 2024. Surprisingly, in another tweet on June 7, 2024, the earlier stance was changed, and it was emphasized that the recommendation for the increase had been made by the IMF and that the Government was trying not to accept this condition of the IMF. Soon after this tweet, the PSX-100 recovered almost all the points and even turned green during intraday trading.

4.      Giving the benefit of the doubt, even if we assume that these statements were tweeted by the journalist in good faith, there should still be certain accountability for such baseless statements. Even if these proposals were being considered by the Government and the IMF, they should have remained confidential. To avoid any such issue, the Government should at least identify the perpetrators who leak such information.