DHAKA: Investors are in uncertainty over the listing of state-owned enterprises with the capital market as the offloading process allegedly got stuck-up in the reluctance of the ministries concerned and bureaucratic tangles for long.

Competent sources said a good number of public companies even hit snags in the final stages of landing on the stock market, while the bourses kept running short of stocks amid a brouhaha created by a rush of investors.

There are some “vested-interest groups” in the foot-dragging bureaucracy who don't want to let off the opportunity of taking undue advantages, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official alleged.

He said, “If the government just relies on the bureaucracy in this matter, it will take more time to happen."

The last political government had decided to register 56 government-owned organizations with the capital market on October 31, 2005. During the last caretaker government’s tenure, only two were enlisted for trading on the market.

Later, on January 13 this year, the ruling government also decided to bring 26 public companies in the capital market by coming July. But there has been hardly any progress in this regard till now, said the SEC and Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) sources.

According to the sources, the SOEs have been divided into three: the first group consists of companies listed with the stock markets and the second one formed with the new companies who are out of the capital market.  The multinational companies with government partnership are among the rest.

A very few government-owned enterprises are now on the capital market. Those are DESCO, Power Grid, Titas Gas, Jamuna Oil, and Meghna Petroleum.

The government has already collected Tk 20,000 crore from the capital market through the companies.

Experts are of the opinion that the government can collect more than Tk 50,000 crore by offering IPO (initial public offering) of its companies’ shares.

A source, on condition of anonymity, said the ministry officials are not active enough to enroll government companies’ shares with the market, as they find no personal benefit from the process.

But, for the sake of the country’s capital market and its investors, the government should implement the decision within the shortest possible time, he added.

BDST: 1944HRS. May 22, 2010
SR/TSA/AK/SMS/MUA