|
Press Trust has said Mwaiwathu Private Hospital is no longer a white elephant, having made a respectable operating profit in the last six months.
“Mwaiwathu has been turned around, there is a lot of improvement,” said the trust’s executive director Clement Chilingulo on Wednesday without disclosing how much the company has made.
Early this year, Press Trust—a public trust with a wide investment portfolio in the economy—wrote off its investments in Mwaiwathu and Press Agriculture Limited (PAL), saying the two were not paying returns.
The hospital, touted as one of the best health facility in southern Africa, has had a shaky financial base since its establishment in 1998, prompting the trust, the major shareholder, to work out strategies to bring it back on track.
Two years ago, Mwaiwathu management confirmed having operational debts and critics described it as a white elephant when local insurance broker Eagle Insurance put up a notice of liquidation in a bid to get its dues.
Meanwhile, Chilingulo has said the trust is now content with the way Limbe Leaf Tobacco Company is running PAL, saying the farming firm has now started repaying some of its loans.
Press Agriculture owes local suppliers and financiers in excess of K600 million.
The trust entered into a financing and management contract on the farming company’s flue cured tobacco division as part of restructuring.
It is still looking for investors to take over PAL’s estates division involved in the growing of tobacco, coffee and macadamia nuts among other crops.
“But we know that if we bring in an investor now, they will buy it for a song. So we will wait for a few more years because we hope the current arrangement with Limbe Leaf will help improve the company so that it can fetch a good price,” he said.
Press Trust owns 94 percent of the troubled PAL, while the balance is held by insurance group Old Mutual. Press Agriculture has 110 estates, covering 72,000 hectares.
The trust took over equity in the firm, the country’s biggest grower of tobacco—Malawi’s number one cash crop contributing over 60 percent of total exports—in 1994 when former conglomerate Press Corporation Limited (PCL) was listing on the local bourse and in London “to avoid dragging the price.
|
