Visakhapatnam: YSRC Vizag Lok Sabha seat nominee and party honorary president Y.S. Vijayalakhsmi on Saturday said that if voted to power, her government would prevent the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant from slipping into the hands of private parties.
It is worth mentioning here that the Union government had decided to offload some shares in RINL, the corporate entity of VSP, by going for Initial Public Offering (IPO). But due to varied reasons, the IPO never hit the markets.
In 2012, RINL here had missed going for an IPO thrice due to June 13 mishap, strong opposition from work force and poor market conditions among other reasons.
It was on October 16, 2012, the last time that the RINL was supposed to be listed in the stock exchange, which got deferred indefinitely too.
“There is a need to save VSP from being privatised. We will not privatise any government undertaking if voted to power. Our government will strive for the expansion of the present steel plant. We will also see that VSP gets captive iron ore mines to tide over the crisis of raw material shortage. We are even ready to fight with Union government and bail out VSP from financial crisis,” said Ms Viajayalakshmi at an election road show near VSP main gate.
RINL is in the advanced stage of the process of upping its production capacity from 3.2 million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes at a cost of Rs 12,500 crore. The RINL IPO was supposed to mark the beginning of the government’s Rs 30,000-crore divestment programme.
By diluting its 10 per cent stake in RINL, the government aimed to raise about Rs 2,500 crore.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in January 2012 had approved of the disinvestment in RINL. The company has appointed four merchant bankers UBS Securities, Deutsche Bank, Edelweiss Capital and IDBI Capital as the book-running lead managers to manage the IPO process.
