KUALA LUMPUR: Intergrated oil and gas services provider SapuraKencana Petroleum Bhd is taking steps to meet syariah-compliant requirements of Securities Commission Malaysia (SC).
An industry source said steps are being taken to ensure compliance is reached internally by the end of its financial year ending January next year.
“The aim is to be ready by end of this financial year so that the company may be included in the next SC review of syariah-compliant companies in May,” the source said.
SapuraKencana was omitted from the latest SC list of syariah-compliant stocks because it did not meet one of three requirements — conventional debt cannot be more than two-thirds of a company’s total assets.
The SC calculations are based on the last audited accounts of the company, which is in January this year.
All of SapuraKencana’s borrowings are conventional debt as Malaysian banks do not have large enough United States dollar-denominated Islamic products or the limit to support SapuraKencana and this fact has been explained to the SC by a leading lender.
Over the past six months, the company has been working with its 14 bank lenders, all of whom have been supportive and received internal approvals to convert their required portions of debt into syariah-compliance debt to meet SC requirements.
It is expected that SapuraKencana would be able to meet syariah-compliance requirements by financial year ended January next year.