Mudajaya willing to fully cooperate with SC on probe

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KUCHING: Homegrown builder Mudajaya Group Bhd (Mudajaya) says that it is more than willing to extend its full cooperation to the Securities Commission (SC), if queried.

EARNINGS BOOST: For Mudajaya, its involvement in the Chhattisgarh IPP project should result accretively to its future earnings upon commercial operations of projects's Phase Two by 2012.

EARNINGS BOOST: For Mudajaya, its involvement in the Chhattisgarh IPP project should result accretively to its future earnings upon commercial operations of projects's Phase Two by 2012.

In a remark made in its note to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the group disclosed that it had not been directly queried by SC with regards to any complaints about the company, thus far.

“The board of Mudajaya is not aware of the nature of the complaint about the company by anyone whosoever. Furthermore, the board also assures that the company’s operations are done in accordance with all statutory requirements, as well as in compliance with all listing regulations,” it stated.

The matter came to light following a news report last week that highlighted SC as ‘looking into the affairs’ of Mudajaya due to a complaint it received about the group.

In response, Mudajaya’s managing director Ng Ying Loong commented that its was ‘strange’ that the SC would be looking into the company’s affairs as it has done nothing wrong.

He added the SC had contacted its auditors to get some general information.

Entailing the group’s filing to the Bursa Malaysia, trading of Mudajaya’s shares was halted at the time of the board’s opening yesterday, before resuming at 10am at RM5.88 per share.

Meanwhile, talks on the possibility for multi-business holding company Tanjong Plc (Tanjong) to acquire Mudajaya turned out to be unfounded.

At its recent annual general meeting (AGM), Tanjong’s chairman Datuk Robert Cheim said that there was no interest or intention on the part of the company to take over a significant stake in Mudajaya at this point of time.

The matter was brought up due to both groups having significant involvement in the power sector.

Interestingly enough, both groups had also been eyeing to bid for power plant projects in India, where Tanjong already had a ‘powerful’ presence across Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

For Mudajaya, its Indian equipment procurement contract worth RM3.4 billion for the Chhattisgarh power plant project had just received a boost last month, where it secured a full total ‘Common Rupee Term Loan Agreement’ (CRTLA) worth approximately RM2.75 billion (Indian rupees 38.74 billion).

The loan facility accounted for 75 per cent of total development expenditure to set up units two, three and four for Phase Two of the Chhattisgarh’s independent power plant (IPP) project.

With a gross total development expenditure of RM3.67 billion (rupees 51.66 billion), the CRTLA should result accretively to Mudajaya’s future earnings upon commercial operations of the Chhattisgarh’s IPP Phase Two project by 2012.