MALAYSIA Venture Capital Management Bhd (Mavcap) has invested RM80 million in three new venture capital (VC) funds under its RM200 million Outsource Partners Programme 2 (OSP2) launched last year.

Mavcap has also repaid RM100 million this year to parent Ministry of Finance, which had initially lent it RM500 million six years ago to kickstart operations.

MoF subsequently gave another RM500 million under the Ninth Malaysia Plan to help Mavcap spur VC investments in the ICT and other related high-growth sectors.

Mavcap chairman Datuk Dr Abdul Samad Alias said it needed to pay the same amount to MoF for the first RM500 million loan every year until 2010.

"About 95 per cent of the initial fund of RM500 million under Mavcap's management has been committed and allocated for. Since the past six years, we have written off and incurred some provisional losses in 17 investments amounting to RM35 million," he told reporters after announcing the first three recipients of Mavcap's OSP-2 programme in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

He also noted that Mavcap had taken to IPOs (initial public offerings) and listed seven companies including Jobstreet Corp Bhd, e-Pay Asia Ltd, ISS Consulting Bhd, Mems Technology Bhd and GPRO.

Meanwhile, the first OSP-2 recipients are Ethos Capital One Sdn Bhd, Expedient Equity Ventures Sdn Bhd and DTA Plato Capital Sdn Bhd. Ethos received the largest portion of RM30 million, while Expedient and DTA Plato will each get RM25 million.

OSP2 was launched last July, while the first programme was introduced in 2001 with a fund of RM100 million. Four VC funds of RM25 million each were set up and managed by Mavcap's outsource partners under OSP1.

Mavcap chief executive officer Norazharuddin Abu Talib said OSP2 is to sponsor seven new funds from existing OSP1 partners and new ones.

Norazharuddin said Mavcap was finalising several new VC funds including one Islamic VC fund and would announce "a couple of recipients" in the next six months.

Mavcap, together with its OSP partners, has invested in 83 companies since its inception in April 2001.