Mozambique Energy: HCB appoints banking consortium for share offer

Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the company that operates the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi, in the western Mozambican province of Tete has announced that a consortium between the BCI (Commercial and Investment Bank), the second largest commercial bank in Mozambique, and the Global Investment Bank (BIG) of Portugal, will head the banking syndicate in charge of selling 7.5 per cent of HCB shares.

The shares are to be sold to Mozambican citizens, companies and institutions, in terms of the legislation in force, and the public tender launched last February.

The consortium will “provide services concerned with the organisation, registration, authorisation, advertising, launch and implementation of the Public Sales Offer of HCB shares on the Mozambique Stock Exchange”, according to a release from HCB.

The sale of shares to the public, HCB says, is in line with the law on public-private partnerships, large scale projects and business concessions, putting into practice the principle of promoting the involvement of Mozambicans in the economy and “inclusive economic growth”.

HCB also believes that the sale of 7.5 per cent of its shares will help consolidate the company’s credibility among the main interested national and international parties, notably international financial institutions, since it shows that HCB is willing to follow internationally accepted good practice of corporate governance, and is prepared for openness to permanent public scrutiny.

The share offer was first announced in November last year by President Filipe Nyusi when he visited the dam town of Songo for the ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the passage of HCB into majority Mozambican ownership.

At the time, Nyusi explained that, over the next ten years, HCB expects to invest 500 milllion euros (about 583 million US dollars) in rehabilitating the Songo sub-station, and equipping it with state-of-the-art technology so as to align the company’s electricity generation with the needs of domestic and international consumption. Source: AIM