The process of transferring hard title deeds for the 130 hectares of land that the publicly listed state-owned Sihanoukville Autonomous Port (PAS) sold to a buyer in 2021 with an agreement they signed was completed in early this year after it made a loss of about $3.5 million in the last quarter of 2022, said a report released on Cambodia’s bourse.
The report, ‘Unaudited interim condensed financial information for the three-month and twelve-month periods ended December 31, 2022,’ pointed out that the process was completed in January 2023 and the remaining contract value is expected to be received by the end of February this year after the buyer paid $2 million as a deposit on the contract date.
PAS—public enterprise listed on the Main Board of Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) on June 8, 2017—entered into the sale and purchase agreement to sell the 130-hectare land located in Bet Trang commune of Preah Sihanouk province at $20 per square metre, which required the buyer to pay $26 million to PAS upon the completion of ownership title deed (LMAP).
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“This size of the land might be charged due to ongoing public road construction on it and re-measurement as part of ownership title deeds transferring process by the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction,” the report pointed out, adding that no gain as recognised for the periods ended December 31, 2022, as the transfer had not to be completed.
PAS is a public autonomous institution that is under the technical supervision of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MPWT) and the financial supervision of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and was registered as a state-owned public enterprise with the Ministry of Commerce to the sole international and commercial deep-sea port in Cambodia.
In its status as a public autonomous institution, PAS has obtained extensive authority and major duties from the government to carry out its activities to provide seaport services and related services such as bringing vessels in and out and providing them with supplies, conducting cargo handling, offloading, loading and transporting, according to the report.
On the contrary to quarter 4 of 2022, PAS gained a profit of more than $6 million in the same period of the previous year, said the report, adding that the seaport firm’s annual profit has decreased over 10 percent to about $20.8 million last year from approximately $23.1 million in 2021.
Source: Khmer Times
