Pakistan Stock Exchange Down Amidst Tensions
Pakistan Stock Exchange Goes Offline Amidst Rising Tensions
The Pakistan Stock Exchange website is currently down, displaying a simple message: ‘WE’LL BE BACK SOON, PSX website is under maintenance until further notice.’ This outage comes amidst heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following the tragic Pahalgam terror attack in Kashmir, which claimed 26 lives.
The attack prompted India to announce retaliatory measures, including suspending visas for Pakistani nationals and reducing the number of diplomats at Pakistani missions in India. These actions have understandably caused unease in the Pakistani market.
On Thursday, the Pakistan Stock Exchange opened significantly lower. The benchmark Karachi-100 index (KSE-100) dropped more than two percent, or 2,500 points, in the first few minutes of trading. While the index recovered some ground, it still closed lower by 1.31 percent, reflecting the market’s sensitivity to escalating tensions.
The website outage has sparked a flurry of reactions on social media. Some users saw it as a way to halt stock selling, while others expressed surprise that Pakistan even had a stock exchange.
This incident highlights the fragile state of the Pakistan economy and its susceptibility to geopolitical events. The country is already facing economic challenges, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently downgrading Pakistan’s GDP growth forecasts.
