East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA- Bank of Kigali Limited has put on market its 45% shares for the public in an effort to increase its capital base.
The offer has been opened to investors of all nationalities as the government offers 20% of its share holding while another 25% new shares will be created and to be listed on Rwanda Stock Exchange end August.
The 45% shares represent 300, 304, 400 shares of the total 667, 337, 000 shares. The government is offering over 133, 467, 400 shares while the bank of Kigali offers 166, 837, 000 shares.
The Bank expects to earn an additional capital base of over Rwf 37.5bn (US $ 62. 9m) if all 45% shares are successfully sold.
Each share cost Rwf 125 (US $ 0.209732) and each slot of shares is supposed to be 100 shares.
Investors from the East Africa can apply for the 82,591,440 shares under a sub-pool and foreign investors beyond EA can apply for shares under the international pool.
During the initial public offer (IPO) late last week, the minister of Finance John Rwangombwa said that development of the capital market in Rwanda is a deliberate strategy to enhance the long term capital formation.
Rwangombwa who unsealed the Bank's IPO said that government is keen to create the culture of savings and investment through wide spread ownership of shares and other financial assets in Rwanda.
The Bank's Managing Director James Gatera told the press earlier that the selling of these shares will help them execute their strategies of evolving into a universal bank, with high capacity electronic banking channels, fund the growth and reduce the asset/liability maturity gap.
The government is also planning to sell its shares in MTN Rwanda and expects to raise Rwf25 billion(US $ 41.9m) from both bank of Kigali and the latter.
This is government's move to encourage private equity investment among Rwanda's citizenry and to promote development of the local capital markets.
The government embarked on privatization programme of state owned enterprises to reduce the shares it has in public companies thus alleviating the financial burden on its resources through the elimination of subsidies and state investment.