NEW LAW SEEKS TO PRESS FIRMS TO ENLIST AT DAR BOURSE

Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango.

The government mulls coming up with a new law and regulations that will compel privatised firms to enlist at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) if they fail to do so voluntarily.

The move aims at encouraging transparency and good corporate governance; hence making tax administration task easier while enabling citizens to participate in economic activities. For instance, some of the listed companies feature in the 15 largest taxpayers and quality employment provision list; namely TBL, TCC, NMB, CRDB Bank, Simba Cement, Twiga Cement and TOL Gases.

The Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango, said the same mechanism (mutual talks) used to list seven privatised firms at the DSE would be applied to other firms that had not been listed. “If the mutual talks fail, then the government will push them to offload some of their shares at the DSE,” Dr Mpango said during the official self-listing of DSE shares at the bourse.

He noted that although the government had stakes in some of the privatised companies, it will offload them strategically to avoid harming their operations. “We do not only want Tanzanians to buy shares in those companies and boost their welfare but we also need to openly see the companies’ operations and proper determination of (our) taxes,” Dr Mpango said.

Earlier, DSE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr Moremi Marwa said more than 400 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) had been privatised in the last two decade out of which only seven made their way through the capital market.

“We only wish if at least 10 per cent of the privatised companies were privatised through the exchange -- we would have over 50 companies. The impact (of listing 50 firms) to our capital market and economy would have been significant,” Mr Marwa argued.

The CEO stated that learning through previous experience, “it is advisable that future privatisations are conducted through the capital market.” Capital Markets and Securities Authority (CMSA) CEO Ms Nasama Massinda said they were very pleased by the government’s move to require the telecoms sector to offload 25 per cent of their share by listing at DSE.

We believe this is the right thing as we want Tanzanians to own shares of these companies... the trend is that some of the firms are allocating shares to one or two ‘mwananchi’. We want them to sell their shares to the public. And the good thing is that these shares are not given for free since local investors would buy them,” Ms Massinda noted.

She added that like Electronic and Postal Communications Act (EPOCA) 2010, the Mining Act also requires that mining firms, with special mining licences, should sale parts of their shares to citizens through DSE.

DSE yesterday self-listed after a successful initial public offer that saw it was oversubscribed by 377 per cent. The shares rally in the first day from 500/- at IPO to 800/- in just 20 minutes of listing. It is believed that the more attractive DSE becomes, the more enterprises and investors would come up to use the local capital market to support the industrialisation drive.

Daily News