Sheikh Shahariar Zaman
The government keeps persuading Unilever Bangladesh to offload its shares under a move to increase the capital market depth.
"Unilever officials came to the finance ministry today (Wednesday) to know the government's position on the issue and we have informed them that we want the company to offload its shares for the benefit of the capital market," said an official of the ministry.
However, the board of the company has the final say in this connection, as under the existing laws, only the board of a company can take such a policy decision on share offloading, an industries ministry official said.
Unilever has offloaded shares in India and Pakistan and should do it in Bangladesh too, he added.
In an inter-ministerial meeting on January 13 last, the government decided to offload shares of 26 state-owned companies. In the same meeting, the industries ministry was asked to take steps to offload shares of multinational companies (MNCs) like Unilever.
The industries ministry holds 39.25 per cent stake in Unilever Bangladesh.
"The government-appointed directors of the company are also persuading its board to take a decision to offload its shares," the finance ministry official said.
"The ministry can only persuade the board through its appointed directors to this end," he said.
Referring to other MNCs, he said the ministry's stakes in BATBC and Reckitt Benckiser are negligible.
Unilever Bangladesh, a company producing the fast moving consumer goods, has been operating in the country for four decades manufacturing and supplying products of three categories, home care, personal care and foods.
It employs over 10,000 people directly and also indirectly through its dedicated suppliers, distributors and service providers.
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