Nasfund invests in power, water

By DALE LUMA
NATIONAL Superannuation Fund chief executive officer Ian Tarutia says Nasfund will be looking for investment opportunities in the power, water, telecommunication and port sectors.
Tarutia was responding to The National’s query whether the fund was interested in the Government’s idea of partial privatisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs).
State Enterprises Minister Sasindran Muthuvel announced recently that with the idea of partial privatisation, it would be looking for serious investors, naming superfunds as one of its targets.
“We are interested in power energy generation, water, telecommunication and ports infrastructure,” Tarutia said.
‘We have made this known to the SOE minister in a letter we sent to his office last December.
“We received a response from the SOE minister in January that NEC (National Executive Council) had endorsed a comprehensive reform programme to improve the performance of all SOEs.
“Thus, from a Nasfund perspective, we will be looking for opportunities in these sectors that meet our investment objective, asset allocation strategy and risk and return profile.
“With the recent announcement of Isikeli Taureka as managing director of Kumul Consolidated Holdings Ltd (KCH), we look forward to progressing discussions.”
Muthuvel explained that in the idea of partial privatisation, the Government would be a perceived investor, getting annual dividends.
He said the idea was a result of the success story of Bank South Pacific (BSP) which was also privatised.
“In doing so, we become perceived investors, for example, we become 49 per cent shareholders and the industry partner can become a 51 per cent shareholder,” he said.
“So out of our 49, we could give 30 per cent of our shares to superfunds which are cash rich.”