Earlier the tender process was to have closed at the end of June and the new owner to be known this month.
However, Matthew Hodge-kopa from the Finance Ministry, who is in-charge of the tender process, yesterday told the Solomon Star that the closing date was further extended for a month.
“The date to lodge tenders was extended to August 2. Announcements will be made following that date and after the board of SML has made a decision on who should purchase the assets of Sasape Marina Ltd,” he said.
A number organisations and businesses are believed to have shown interest to buy off SML assets, which are based in Tulagi, Central Province.
SML is one of the government's State Owned Enterprise (SOE) and has been providing services such as slipway facilities and engineering, fitting, machinist, Shipwriting, welding, electronic maintenance of navigation and life-raft.
The sale come as government tries to privatise all the State Owned Enterprises (SOE) because of increasing cost to maintain and support them.
It is understood Sasape Marina's operations had incurred losses for over the past years of its operations.
This has resulted in employees being without pay for many months and which later led to a redundancy exercise.
Apart from SML the first SOE to be privatised was the Home Finance Corporation, which the National Provident Fund (NPF), bought last year for $13 million.
The tender process is being funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which engaged overseas advisers to do evaluation on the SOEs and then advise the government of its value.
Some of the SOEs are Solomon Airlines, Solomon Island Water Authority (SIWA), Solomon Islands Electricity Authority (SIEA), and Postal Corporation.
By MOFFAT MAMU
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