HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has valued the Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG), the country’s largest rubber company, at VNĐ4 trillion (US$177.78 million), not including its land, marking another step toward its equitisation by the end of 2017.

According to a decision signed by MARD last week, the company will submit its equitisation plan to the Government this month. VRG missed the deadline for its initial public offering (IPO), which was scheduled for July 2017.

According to deputy minister Hà Công Tuấn, the reason for the delay is the Government’s desire for the IPO to be audited by the State Audit of Việt Nam to ensure the State capital in the company is protected.

As VRG has a large area of land property, which covers 420,000ha in Việt Nam, Laos and Cambodia, the audit must be carried out carefully, Tuấn said. “This is such a big advantage for VRG and the profit brought by the large area of land could be huge in the future.”

“It will take months to collect feedback from other ministries and sectors on the equitisation plan of VRG, but we have to be careful to preserve the State capital in the company,” said Tuấn.

Nonetheless, deputy minister Tuấn and VRG deputy general director Huỳnh Văn Bảo assured local media that the company will complete its equitisation by the end of this year and start running as a joint-stock firm in 2018.

In addition to careful inspection of VRG’s land property, the IPO has also been delayed by the search for a strategic investor with specialised knowledge and understanding of the agricultural sector and the same vision as VRG.

Deputy minister Tuấn and the firm’s general director Trần Ngọc Thuận told Đầu Tư (Investment) newspaper that it was hard to find such a potential investor who can also spend around VNĐ5-10 trillion to purchase part of the Government capital. The company’s charter capital as of December 21, 2015 was VNĐ26.16 trillion.

VRG has maintained good performance on rising rubber prices. The rubber price on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange gained 0.1 per cent to finish Friday trading at 221.4 yen per kilogramme.

In the first six months of 2017, VRG posted VNĐ8.1 trillion in revenue and VNĐ1.5 trillion in post-tax profit, increases of 46 per cent and 169 per cent from one year ago. The figures helped VRG complete 33 per cent and 47 per cent of its targets for 2017. — VNS