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2019-12-26
Sahem Weekly Trading Report (22-26)-12-2019
With the approaching end of the year 2019, Al-Quds Index ended its trading of this week- with four trading sessions- at the level 523.43 points; with weekly gains of 0.11%, and up by 1.93% than the lowest level recorded during the year which was witnessed in October. However, executing a transaction of 0.70 million shares on the stocks of Sanad Construction Resources Company SANAD raised the trading value to the medium level, to top the trading value of Palestine Stock Exchange PEX by more than 50%. Regarding the leading stocks, they witnessed variation in their price trends without any trading momentum. On another hand, the anticipation grows for the new year 2020, with new hope of exceptional investment opportunities within the sustained growth in the listed companies’ profits, the increase in liquidity, and maintaining a moderate performance, and what may follow of boosting in the market capitalization and improving in the market in general.
Regarding the economic indicators and according to a report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics PCBS and Palestine Monetary Authority PMA, GDP in Palestine, during 2019, increased by 1.2% compared to 2018. Thus, the Palestinian economy maintained its previous growth rate for the year 2018 in spite of the financial crisis that the economy faced that witnessed a withholding for clearance revenues for more than 6 consecutive months, and what resulted of liquidity problems and accumulation of government's arrears as well as the continuing decline of external grants and aids, especially the suspension of American aid for government and civil organizations and institutes (UNRWA and USAID), in addition to the continuing settlement expansion as well as continuing to confiscate more lands in the West Bank and not allowing the exploitation of natural resources in areas (C). Hence, GDP per capita declined by 1.3% compared to 2018 due to the natural population growth with a pace higher than the growth in GDP. Accordingly, the first quarter of 2019 witnessed a decline in the real GDP by 3.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. The decline continued during the second quarter of 2019 by 2.0% compared to the first quarter of 2019 as a result of the clearance revenues crisis with the Israeli occupation; the clearance revenues constitute almost two thirds of the government's revenues. In the context of the financial crisis management, the government adopted an emergency budget resulted in a partial suspension for government obligations towards paying its wage bill to public sector employees. In the third quarter of 2019, estimates indicated that there is a slight improvement in the level of economic activity; thus, it recorded an increase of 1.0% compared to the previous quarter of the same year. During the fourth quarter of 2019, GDP continued to increase, recording a growth of 3.6% compared to the third quarter of 2019 due to the expectation of the recovery of domestic demand, especially household consumption expenditure, the improvement of growth pace of main economic activities, and the accelerating levels of government expenditure after the resumption of transferring a big part of government's clearance revenues on a monthly basis and in retrospectively of the past months of 2019, in addition that the government paid a large part of its arrears that were accumulated during the past period to public sector employees and to suppliers from private sector.
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