Egodini contractor mulls equity scheme for Bulawayo

SOUTH African civil engineering firm, Terracotta, will be launching a broad-based retail equity scheme, which allows Bulawayo residents to acquire a maximum of 30% shareholding in the Egodini project.

In 2015, Terracotta was awarded the contract to develop a transport hub and shopping mall at Basch Street Terminus, popularly known as Egodini.

Terracotta Trading (Private) Limited director, Thulani Moyo said the company will conduct a proper process to set up an entity. After that, he said, the company would have proper advisors to deal with that entity, which will have its own board of directors.

"We will enter into arrangement with that entity to say okay, we are allocating whether 20% or 30% to the project or whatever it is then we calculate how much money that entity must raise. Then once that it's done, that entity will then do a public offer in terms of the normal laws, they will do a prospectus, following all the laws and regulations," Moyo said.

He said after that, the public offer will be open for two or three months "because we want to catch people when they have got money towards the end of year. We want to keep it open so that people would then be able to have enough time to subscribe."

"We want to make it affordable so that even grandmothers and grandfathers can be able to invest. It's for the masses not for the elites. People don't have to come as individuals because already some of them belong to associations, be it a taxi or hawkers' association or church or an investment club or whatever association, they can also come. We want people to participate because it a very big project and very significant," Moyo, said adding the scheme was also open for people in the Diaspora.
He said the advantages of the scheme were plenty, but warned that it would not give people quick money.

"It's not going to make you quick money. It's a long term investment like any property or infrastructure investment but it's about wealth creation. That money that you have got, if you say I have got R2 000 or R3 000 you put it there and forget about it . . .," Moyo said.

"When we do that retail scheme, that retail scheme can also invest in other projects in Zimbabwe then it can grow. So we are teaching people to invest and to save. We are making people participate in mainstream economics," he said.

If all goes well, the scheme is expected to be listed on the local bourse.

Egodini project is set to kickstart this month with taxi operators and vendors having been moved from the site to pave way for the project.