Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has ordered a probe into rumours of his resignation that triggered a stock market crash even as an analyst said the incident "raised fundamental questions about Pakistan's wider economic trends".

"I have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and other agencies to file an investigation report of the whole affair," Aziz said at a press conference in his National Assembly chamber.

"You should dismiss rumours of my resignation and move on," Aziz added.

The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) had gained 286.7 points Tuesday, a day after the budget was presented, but rumours of Aziz's resignation led to selling pressure Wednesday and the index declined 127.6 points.

"The speculation led to an erosion of Rs.110 billion ($1.8 billion) in market capitalisation, but it recovered towards close of the session," the economist prime minister said.

The KSE index was up 43.46 points Thursday on cautious buying.

"It's clear that a small group of investors found it convenient to spread malicious rumours about the prime minister in the hope of reaping windfall gains," Farhan Bokhari, contributing editor of The News, wrote in Friday's edition in an analysis headlined "The politics of stocks".

"The happenings around the stock market must also raise fundamental questions about Pakistan's wider economic trends. There are fewer companies listed on the stock market today than five or seven years ago, which essentially raises questions over the centrality of the stock market to Pakistan's investment future," he maintained.

"In spite of higher economic growth rates which have taken Pakistan to the category of near robust Asian economies, the truth simply remains that the market is hardly an active vehicle for investors to raise capital.

"The medium to long term future of the Pakistani economy must be decided by important parameters such as the scale of its developmental process, the success or lack of it in driving forward reforms tied to governance, and the ways in which political continuity or change affects the lives of its grass roots population," he argued.

Noting that questions on issues of governance had come up time and again, Bokhari said that since Aziz first came to office as the finance minister five years ago, Pakistan has seen repeated official commitments on improving the quality of government and governance.

"But the quality of life for the average grief stricken Pakistani remains largely unchanged... Pakistanis still find themselves surrounded by a culture of nepotism and corruption, which ultimately affects the ways in which a credible and progressive development agenda moves forward.

"Pakistan's two mainstream political parties remain out in the cold while the ruling Pakistan Muslim League created in the good name of the late Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah is far from establishing a national foothold.

"The core of the country's economy and its workings simply cannot be isolated from ways in which its politics work. Wednesday's crash of the stock market may well have been avoided if indeed there was a stable political structure, placed in charge of Islamabad," Bokhari maintained.