Govt to sell 4% stake in Hindustan Copper on Friday

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), which was supposed to consider divesting 9.5 percent stake in Hindustan Copper (HCL), has proposed only 4 percent disinvestment as of now. CNBC-TV18's Aakansha Sethi reports.

Informing this Union mines minister said the sell-off will be done in two tranches. The remaining 5.59  percent divestment will be done at a later stage. "The government has 99.59 percent of HCL's share and 0.41 percent is with other companies....4 percent of government’s share will be disinvested," Mines minster Dinsha Patel told reporters today.
The 4 percent stake is valued at nearly Rs 900 crore (USD 163 million) at current market price, but New Delhi is expected to offer shares at a discount to the market price to lure investors.
The federal cabinet approved the sale of 9.5 percent in Hindustan Copper in September. Mohd. Haleem Khan, secretary at the department of divestment, said the stake sale on Friday would be the first step.
The government has decided to go ahead with only one tranche to avoid flooding the market with shares and to get a good price from the auction.
The auction will take place on Friday and a floor price will be announced tomorrow. The government plans to sell stakes in miner NMDC and explorer Oil India before December 20, Khan old reporters.

If the government does manage to get all three of these, as well as NTPC, then it has a shot of at least getting Rs 25,000 crore (it has a target of Rs 30,000 crore). 
The divestment secretary told CNBC-TV18 that NALCO stake sale is likely to happen in the last quarter. It is not been deferred infinitely but just because the bankers said that the right time to do it would be in the last quarter. So, you could see NALCO divestment happening too and that perhaps will be good news not just for divestment but also for that 5.3 percent fiscal deficit number.