NITI Aayog has prepared a list of public sector units where the government can sell its majority stake to private companies in order to bring in greater efficiency and professionalism in functioning.
Based on its suggestions, the DIPAM has finalised a model of strategic disinvestment. Since the beginning of the year, the department got into full swing and divested stake in Engineer's India which fetched the exchequer Rs 642 crore, followed by NTPC (Rs 5,014 crore) and Concor (Rs 1155 crore).
Besides, it all bought back shares in two unlisted PSUs Hindustan Aeronautics (Rs 4,284 crore) and Bharat Dynamics (Rs 199 crore). All these happened in the January-March quarter.
Beginning April, the start of financial year, the department has focused more on buy back with five cash rich PSUs buying back their shares. While NALCO buy back fetched the government Rs 2,832 crore, NMDC got Rs 7519 crore, MOIL (Rs 793 crore), BEL (Rs 1802 crore) and Coal India (Rs 2,638 crore).
Besides, the offer for sale of NHPC and NBCC garnered Rs 2,716 crore and Rs 2,201 crore and paring some of SUUTI Holding fetched exchequer Rs 2,096 crore. For the fiscal ending March 2017, the disinvestment target has been set at Rs 56,500 crore. Of this Rs 36,000 crore is to come from minority stake sale in PSUs and another Rs 20,500 crore from strategic stake sale.
The fiscal target continues to remain far off with total collections of about Rs 24,000 crore in the nine months of the financial year so far. In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: "We will encourage CPSEs to divest individual assets like land, manufacturing unit to release their asset value for making investments in new projects.
"We will adopt a comprehensive approach for efficient management of the government investment in CPSEs by addressing issued such as capital restructuring, dividend, bonus shares."
The CGD will be headed by Cabinet Secretary and also include secretaries to department of revenue, economic affairs, expenditure, disinvestment, public enterprises, corporate affairs and legal affairs besides those of administrative ministries concerned with the PSU.
The last strategic sale took place in Jessop and Co in 2003-04 under the NDA government headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpyaee, when 72 per cent of government stake was sold to Indo Wagon Engineering for Rs 18.18 crore.
Incidentally, the first strategic sale in a PSU also happened under the NDA rule in 1999-2000 when the government sold 74 per cent equity in Modern Food Industries to Hindustan Lever for Rs 105.45 crore.
