Lunar Calendar and Ramadan Effect on Islamic Mutual Funds Performance in Pakistan

This report is principally intended to ascertain out the result of the lunar calendar with special focus on the holy month of Ramadan on the operation of Islamic mutual funds in Pakistan. Economic activity in Pakistan demands a different turn due to observation of fast and short working hours in the country in the month of Ramadan. This work utilizes the logit model to investigate the impact of lunar calendar generally and the holy month of Ramadan, specifically along the net asset values of the mutual fund. This study confirms lower expected growth of net asset value in the month of Ramadan and the other stages of the religious sentiment. Economic activity regains pace after Ramadan and Zulhajjah as evident from the probable increase of net asset value of the Islamic mutual funds in the month of Shawwal & Moharram following months of the Ramadan and Zulhajjah respectively.

The Determinants of Capital Building Methods: A Case Study of Textile Companies

maximize the shareholder wealth and success of companies. In capital budgeting decision making, when making the financial evaluations of the projects then capital budgeting methods are also used. Capital budgeting methods are influenced by the firms' characteristics and decision maker's characteristics. This study conducted with two aims to ascertain the prevailing capital budgeting methods in textile companies and to find the factors of capital budgeting methods. To obtain the objectives, major part of data collected by questionnaire and minor part of data collected from financial statements of 2013 of seventy seven textile companies which are listed on Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). Size (sales), leverage, growth (price-earnings ratio), dividend payout ratio, target range for solvency (debt-to-equity), proportion of foreign sales, management ownership, education of CEOs, age of CEOs and experience of CEOs are taken as independent variables and capital budgeting methods as dependent variables. Descriptive statistics showed that payback period is mostly used by textile companies of Pakistan. Ordinal regression analysis runs on data to find the determinants of capital budgeting methods. Findings showed that target range, foreign sales, size of firm, leverage, management ownership, education of CEOs and age of CEOs have significant association with capital budgeting methods and these are factors of CB methods while growth, dividend payout and tenure of CEOs have no significant association with any capital budgeting methods. Preference of PP method by firms shows that there is theory-practice gap existed in Pakistani textile companies. It is recommended that textile companies should to use sophisticated CB methods. For future studies it is recommended that these variables or some other variables should be studied in other private or public sectors of Pakistan.