Submarine Cables to issue 2.21cr shares

Bangladesh Submarine Cables PLC (BSCPLC) yesterday got approval to issue 2.21 crore ordinary shares against the government's share money deposit of Tk 166 crore, which was provided when the company set up its second submarine cable for increasing internet bandwidth.

Share money deposit refers to funds paid in exchange for shares that have yet to be acquired by the buyer.

The approval was granted at a meeting of the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), which also decided that the shares of BSCPLC would be issued at Tk 75 with a face-value of Tk 10.

The listed state-run company will issue the shares to the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, according to a press release from the BSEC.

Shares of BSCPLC, around 74 percent of which are owned by the government, saw their value rise by around 8 percent to Tk 159 at the Dhaka Stock Exchange yesterday.

The company currently has 16.49 crore outstanding shares.

BSCPLC received Tk 140 crore from the government in financial year 2015-16 under a project to install the country's second submarine cable. In 2016-17, the company got another Tk 26 crore for the same purpose.

The government's fund was used for the installation and establishment of the second submarine cable system under the Regional Submarine Telecommunications Project.

The Southeast Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 5 (SMW-5) is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore and France.

BSCPLC is the only local company that connects the country with the global bandwidth network through undersea cables.