KARACHI (February 09 2010): The National Investment Trust (NIT) has announced launching of its new product 'NIT Income Fund' (NIT IF) on February 15. The Initial Offering of the Fund will remain open for five days from February 15 to 19, 2010. NIT Chairman Tariq Iqbal Khan, during a pre-IPO presentation held at Karachi Stock Exchange auditorium here on Monday, said that the NIT-IF is aimed to provide competitive stream of return with moderate level of risk for its unit holders (both individual and institutional), by investing primarily in fixed income securities/instruments.

"With the launch of NIT Income Fund which would operate like a normal income fund and cater to the needs of low risk investors, the family of Funds under management of NITL will increase to six Funds including four Equity Funds and two Income Funds", he added.

He said that Pacra has upgraded the asset manager rating of NITL to AM2. The rating reflects that the asset manager has very strong capacity to manage risks inherent in asset management and the asset manager meets very high investment management industry standards and benchmarks.

He said that the performance of NIT IF would be compared against six months KIBOR. The benchmark would be average of six months KIBOR rates quoted during the period. The NIT IF is being offered at Rs 10 per unit. Investor can open an account with minimum amount as small as five thousand rupees. However, different classes of units require different amounts of initial and subsequent investments. There is no upper limit of investment for both individual and institutional investors.

The chairman said that no Front/Back End Load would be charged to pre-IPO and IPO Investors. However, subsequent to Initial Offering a front load of one percent of NAV would be applicable whereas back-end load would remain Nil. Tariq said that NIT is the core investor of NIT Income Fund and has invested Rs 100 million of which Rs 50 million shall remain invested for a period of at least two years. All tax benefits available to other mutual funds also available to NIT IF, he added.

He said that benefits of investment in NIT IF are diversified investment in high quality fixed income securities; attractive returns; moderate risk; professional and experienced management; Zakat exemption as per prevailing laws; easy encashment; tax effectiveness, investment starts with a small amount of Rs 5,000 while qualifying as collateral for availing bank financing.

Procedure to invest in NIT IF is quite simple. Just fill in the forms and submit the same along with payment instrument drawn in favour of CDC - Trustee NIT Income Fund and necessary documents to any of the NIT's Branches. Offering document can be downloaded from NIT's website or it can be obtained from NIT's branches or registered office of CDC, he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2010