The Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum (right) receives dividend cheque from Unit Trust of Fiji chairperson, Shaenaz Voss, yesterday. Photo: Rachna Lal
SUVA
Unit Trust of Fiji yesterday handed over a dividend cheque of $119,526 to the Government.
The Attorney-General and Minister for Public Enterprises, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, received the cheque on behalf of the Government.
He highlighted the dividend sum has been increasing progressively for the past three years and they are quite happy.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum, however, stressed their focus is not on dividend payout as it is a service-driven company.
“The Unit Trust of Fiji provides a very good vehicle for ordinary Fijians to invest in,” he said.
“We would be very worried if we had a Government-owned entity that had a lot of capital input, high levels of infrastructure and with a monopoly, their rate of return was not good.
“Unit Trust of Fiji is competing with Fijian Holdings Unit Trust and so is not a monopoly in fact.
“So you have two players competing but at the same time you see the number of people showing interest in Unit Trust of Fiji has increased significantly.”
Market share
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum stressed the Unit Trust of Fiji has a substantial portion of market share of 65 per cent.
“It does attract those unit holders who are at the lower end of the socio-economic scale but of course there are some larger unit holders in Unit Trust of Fiji,” he said.
“It has the focus on attracting the ordinary mums and dads to invest in this type of market.
“Unit Trust of Fiji is unusual from the other public entities because it is one of the entities which provides a range of services to Fijians regarding investment opportunities.”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said there has been some very good rates of return for unit holders for example last year, they paid out a total of $3.57 million as dividends to unit holders.
“This is tax free too as incentivised by the Bainimarama Government to get more people into the capital market,” he said.
Feedback: rachnal@fijisun.com.fj