Stakeholders making profit to get dividends: ENBDC

The National Business

By JUNIOR UKAHA
East New Britain Development Corporation (ENBDC), the business arm of the provincial government, will only pay dividends to its stakeholder if it is making profits, says a director of the company.
William Lamur said this when clarifying claims by politicians in the province that the company had not been paying dividends to the provincial government.
Lamur said the ENBDC was a company created under the Companies Act and as such would operate following strict business principles.
“From 2000-2007, we did not pay any dividends because we were restructuring the whole business,” he said.
This included selling out retail operations of Andersons Supermarket and keeping the properties.
Lamur said that was a pure business decision they had taken because even though the turnover was high, the profit was low and they had been struggling with its operations.
Chief operations officer Molly Waninara said another reason why they had to sell out the retail part of the business was because a lot of Asian retail shops were popping up and giving stiff competition.
“What the board did at that time was to restructure,” she said.
“We had to sell the retail business and retain the properties.
“That is how we had turned around from K33 million to K300 million.”
Lamur said ENBDC was now investing in property and real estate development.
“We are investing in Port Moresby, in properties where there is money,” he said.
“We were getting a turnover of between K350 million and K400 million in our supermarket business, but our net profit was between K1 million to K2 million.
“We took all that out and just owned properties.
“These properties are giving us nearly K13 million without a lot of work.”
Lamur said strong corporate governance ethics was needed in the ENBDC board and management so that the business could grow and pay revenue to the people of the province.
He warned that if politics was involved in the business, then what had been built up in 20 years could be destroyed in just one year.