Move on to get 10 SoEs, MNCs listed

Finance Adviser sits with top officials of these entities concerned tomorrow

SYFUL ISLAM | January 06, 2026 00:00:00

A move advances to rope in 10 more entities having public shares to the stock market long starved of good stocks and facing frequent volatilities, officials say.

Of the ten blue-chip companies, some are solely owned by government while some are multinationals wherein government has small stakes.

Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed is scheduled to sit with the chief executives of the companies tomorrow (Wednesday) to persuade to divest stakes on the share market, according to officials concerned.

"We will request them to offload shares on the stock market," says a senior official at the Financial Institutions Division (FID).

At the same time, he says, the adviser will also hear from the company bosses about their requirements to get listed on the bourses.

"We want to bring multinational companies which have public stakes in the stock market," says another FID official.

He says some profit-making state-owned entities have also been selected for divestment as soon as possible.

Chief executives of Karnaphuli Gas Distribution Company Ltd, Karnaphuli Fertiliser Company Ltd (KAFCO), North-West Power Generation Company Ltd, Pashchimanchal Gas Company Ltd, Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd, Sylhet Gas Fields Ltd, Unilever Bangladesh Ltd, Synovia Bangladesh Ltd, Novartis (Bangladesh) Ltd, and Nestlé Bangladesh PLC are known to have been invited to Wednesday's meeting with the finance adviser.

These companies will be asked to offload shares on the market through the Investment Corporation of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's two bourses have experienced severe volatility during the last couple of years. Experts partly blame the absence of good stocks and lack of confidence among the small investors for the unstable situations in the stock market.

In 2025, the benchmark index of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) lost 351 points or 6.7 per cent to 4,865 while equity-market cap shed Tk 360 billion.

In 2024, the DSE stock index performed worst globally, shedding 16.5 per cent, data show.

syful-islam@outlook.com