Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine may offer Armenian government's stake in IPO - Pashinyan
YEREVAN, December 20. /ARКА/. The Armenian government's stake in the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) may be put up for an IPO, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a government meeting on Thursday.
In September 2021, Industrial Company JSC acquired 60% of the combine’s shares and transferred 25% of its stake to the Armenian government. In August 2022, another 6.875 percent of the plant's shares were transferred to the government, bringing its total stake in the plant to 21.875 percent.
“I think that in the future we should strive to apply such rules so that citizens can obtain the combine’s shares. We have already discussed and decided that the company should develop towards placing the state's share through an open subscription, which is commonly called an IPO. But for this, the company must be at a completely different level of rehabilitation and transparency, and now the government must use its participation in accordance with this logic,” Pashinyan said.
The Prime Minister also said that last week the plant transferred 33.25 billion drams to the state budget as dividends.
“In fact, this has not happened in the Republic of Armenia for 20 years or more,” Pashinyan said, adding that this amount does not include taxes paid, and added that 73.8 billion drams in taxes have already been paid this year.
Thus, according to him, in 11 months of this year, the ZCMC has contributed 107 billion drams to the state budget.
The Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure David Khudatyan noted at a government meeting that as of December 31, 2023, the total amount of dividends exceeded 294 billion drams, of which 152 billion drams have been paid. Of that 33.25 billion drams is the government's share. He added that the government's dividends should also be transferred to the budget from the 142 billion drams that have not been paid so far.
Pashinyan stressed that the government should use its participation to increase the efficiency of the combine, since regardless of the world copper prices, it is obvious that these dividends, especially in other configurations, would have never gone to the state budget, but would have been distributed among individuals or companies.
According to Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan, the copper price is not the only component that provided dividends in the amount of 33 billion drams, "since the transparency of the company's work has changed significantly over the past two years."
During the government meeting, he also added that next year, in addition to the financial report, the company will publish four more reports that will directly relate to sustainable development, environmental protection and social responsibility, among other things.
The ZCMC is located in the Syunik region in the south of Armenia, bordering Iran and Azerbaijan. The plant, which is one of the largest enterprises in Armenia, develops the ore of the Kajaran copper-molybdenum deposit. According to experts, the plant's ore reserves will last for about 150 years. The plant traditionally tops the list of 1000 largest taxpayers in Armenia: according to the State Revenue Committee, the plant's payments to the state budget for the first 9 months of 2024 amounted to 83.7 billion drams. ($1 - 394.91 drams)
