By Vaughn Davis
KINGSTON, Jamaica, (JIS) – Minister of finance and the public service, Fayval Williams, expressed pleasure with the public take-up of the government’s 20 percent stake in TransJamaican Highway Limited (TJH). The public offer for shares, which closed on March 18, attracted more than 22,000 applications, raising over $12 billion, exceeding the initial estimate of $9 billion.
Addressing a recent event held at Progressive Shopping Centre in St Andrew to mark the successful conclusion of the offer, minister Williams said the response of the public shows an increased understanding of the value of such investments.
“I feel very good about the reception of Jamaicans to this. It’s a great investment; something that they understand. They use the toll road every day going to and from work… . They see the potential of it because we are always going to be needing bigger and better roads,” the minister pointed out, and congratulated all the stakeholders involved in the initiative, including lead broker NCB Capital Markets and partner Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB).
“For all the persons who worked on it, all the financial institutions, I just want to say a big thank you to all of them. The timeframe that we gave them was very short but they delivered on time and the deal was oversubscribed,” minister Williams said.
Senior vice president for investment banking, NCB Capital Markets, Christopher Buchanan, in his remarks, said consistent efforts to explain the benefits of the initiative paid dividends in getting public buy-in for the project.
“When you have an offer of this size you probably think the demand is not there unless its institutional. But I think what ended up happening is that the more we spoke about it, the more we gave the market information, and the more we spoke to regular persons about how it would affect them, what we saw was an absolute snowball.”
“We said to them ‘listen, the road naah go nowhere. The company (TJH)… will make money and pay you dividends. They have a long-term contractual agreement and they are looking to build out more tolls over the year. It’s here for the long-term and you can buy it for yourself and I think persons bought into that vision,” he shared.
In the meantime, general manager for public-private partnerships and privatisation at the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), Denise Arana, noted that there are many more government-sponsored investment offers in the pipeline for members of the public.
“The government’s privatisation programme is a deliberate and concerted effort to bring more Jamaicans into the economy to broaden the ownership base. So, we had Wigton (Wind Energy Limited), we had the first TransJamaican transaction…. then we have the Jamaica Mortgage Bank that’s coming.
“So, the government really is looking at a broad spectrum of opportunities to bring them to the market for everybody to participate in that opportunity,” he added.
