The federal government is working out plans to divest own shares in privatized enterprises, Alex Okoh, newly appointed Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has indicated.
Okoh said that the BPE is presently undertaking a quick assessment of privatized enterprises, especially in the petro-chemical sector with a view to divesting the Federal Government shares through the capital market.
“The BPE is working with core investors in certain privatised enterprises sold by deferred public offering to ensure that they sell at least 20% of such entities to the market via public listing”, he said, speaking at the 2017 annual national workshop of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers in Abuja.
He also said the privatisation agency would develop policies to attract additional private sector capital into the privatized companies.
At the event, Okoh told the stockbrokers that Public listings remain a strategic objective of the reform and privatisation programme of the Federal Government.
Okoh who had at assumption of office pledged to step up post-privatized monitoring of sold entities said the Bureau would henceforth ensure that the right core investors with the financial, technical and managerial competences are selected.
According to him, this would ensure that they are capable of moving privatised entities to the desired level in order to make them attractive for public listings.
In a paper titled: Creating An Enabling Environment For Public Listings Of The Economy’s Commanding Heights: The Case For Telecommunications & Energy Sectors, Okoh said developing policies to attract additional private sector capital into the privatized companies will eventually give confidence to the business and encourage listing.
The BPE would ensure that technical partners are retained in the privatized enterprises over a long period of time, he added. There would be continued engagement with the relevant authorities to seek certain waivers where required to make public listings more easily achievable for the privatized entities.
Okoh called for the establishment of an institutional framework to reach targets in both public and private sectors and to identify quick wins, medium term goals, long term achievements.
Also speaking at the event, a former Director-General of the BPE, Benjamin Ezra Dikki, called on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to set up a committee to work on the possibility of getting the telecommunications companies in the country to list on the capital market.
Onyinye Nwachukwu, Abuja
