Govt sale of its ZCCM-IH shares pushes LuSE turnover to K581m

THE Lusaka Stock Exchange has posted a huge trade turnover of K581 million due to the massive revenue contributed from the sale of government’s shares in ZCCM-IH.

According to the LuSE monthly news bulletin for June 2015, total trade turnover on the local bourse was K581 million, up from K41.7 million recorded in May, representing a 1,327 percentage increase.

This is the highest trade turnover recorded this year so far, which translated to a daily average turnover for June at K26.4 million, up from K2.1 million for May, signifying a 1,132 per cent rise.

Last October, finance minister Alexander Chikwanda announced that the government would reduce its shareholding in ZCCM-IH from 87 per cent to 60 per cent via the sale of its shares proportionate to the required reduction.

“Tranche 1 of the government’s sell-down of 15,850,631 shares out of its total 43,811,868 ‘B’ shares (representing 27.5 per cent) in ZCCM-IH transacted in one trade on the 9th of June, 2015, resulting in a turnover of K570,622,716,” the LuSE’s monthly bulletin for June stated.

“This left a balance of 27,961,237 shares which will be offered to Zambian citizens and other eligible Zambian institutions in the 2nd tranche of the government sell-down.”

And LuSE’s operations assistant Kennedy Kaela stated that ZCCM-IH’s huge transaction could be regarded as “unusual” mainly because the company does not trade that often.

“The transaction could only be described as unusual because ZCCM [IH] has not been trading that often. Had it not been for ZCCM, June would have been a poor trading month for the exchange,” stated Kaela in response to a press query.

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