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| Business |
| Commission to open offers for NITL shares |
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by
Abel Mwanyungwe, 21 October 2002
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The Privatisation Commission is expected to open a public offer for 40 million shares in the National Investment Trust Limited (NITL).
Commission Director of Finance Jimmy Lipunga said in Blantyre on Friday that depending on Reserve Bank of Malawi’s (RBM) approval of NITL prospectus, the offer will be opened this week and is expected to close on November 29, 2002.
The offer price of shares in NITL, a collective investment scheme which holds shares in several companies, is K1 each.
Lipunga said the offer, which will initially be restricted to Malawian investors, is in line with the privatisation programme’s core objective to broaden share ownership by Malawians.
“The initial shareholders will be Malawians but investors will have the right to sale their shares to other people later. In order to enable many Malawians to buy shares, there is a special loan fund managed by Nicorp,” he said.
NITL, which is managed by First Merchant Bank (FMB) as fund managers, has shares in Commercial Bank of Malawi (CBM), National Bank of Malawi (NBM) New Building Society (NBS), Sucoma, Dairibord and Auction Holdings Limited (AHL).
The Special Privatisation Loan Fund has K35 million for the exercise and is available at 15 percent interest rate. It is available to both salaried and business Malawians on the payment of 10 percent of the total amount applied.
The fund managers will require that employers deduct payments from salaries for onward forwarding to Nicorp while business Malawians can instruct their banks for stop orders as deductions to service the loans.
Lipunga said NITL, which has an independent board of directors, will list on the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) within three years.
“To list on the exchange, a company has to meet certain criteria. One of them is that shares must be offered to everyone who wants to buy them. NITL is at this time offering shares to Malawian citizens. Also, the MSE looks for a financial history when considering an application to list. Since NITL is brand new, it doesn’t have this history. That is why NITL is not listing now but will within three years,” he said.
Lipunga said investors spread investment risks when they buy shares in investment trusts like NITL because the trust owns shares in various companies.
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