The US dollar started the week with 11 paisas gain against the rupee as it closed the business in inter-bank rate at Rs160.07 on Monday, 24NewsHD TV channel reported.

Meanwhile, the euro too was up by seven paisas and available for Rs173.22. The pound sterling, however, dropped its value and ended the day at Rs197.79 after losing 34 paisas again the rupee.

As far as the open market is concerned, the dollar price sustained at Rs160 while both pound sterling and euro made gains. It was 50 paisas in the case of euro and one rupee for pound with the two currencies closing at Rs173.50 and Rs200 respectively.

On the other hand, the Pakistan Stock Exchange remained flat with the KSE-100 Index closing at 33,283.79 after gaining 16.10 points.

The latest showing again proves the fact that the market is directionless as it was a continuation of the KSE-100 Index shedding 36.47 points on Friday.

Monday saw the share prices of 166 companies going up and that of 126 going down as the shares of 331 entities were traded. The value of the remaining 31 companies remained unchanged during a session where a total of 87,689,981 shares were exchanged.

It was a bad day for the automobile, oil and gas, cement and chemical sectors with the shares of the majority of companies shedding their values. However, the session gave mixed feelings to the investors in the case of commercial bank.

Meanwhile, the engineering sector continues to either have a bad or mixed session with the Monday being mixed.

However, the pharmaceutical companies remained the top performers. The shares of 10 companies were available for trading and nine of them barring Abbot Laboratories – Rs2.47 loss – saw the prices going up.

The three best performing pharma companies were: Wyeth Rs27.85, Ferozsons Rs20.22 and Glaxo SmithKline Healthcare Rs11.83.