PSU stake sale every fortnight, to achieve Rs 30K cr target

Working against time to achieve Rs 30,000 crore disinvestment target, the government has decided to come out every fortnight with one PSU public issue, beginning with Oil India.

"We are planning Oil India stake sale this month. From February onwards there will be one one issue every fortnight and in March it could be every week," a senior finance ministry official said.

As per the roadmap worked out by the disinvestment department, disinvestment in OIL will happen in January, followed by NTPC, NALCO in February and MMTC, SAIL, EIL and Rashtriya Chemical and Fertilisers in March.

On the possibility of government achieving the Rs 30,000 crore target, the official said that in case the government is able to sale its equity in SAIL the target would be met.

However, he added, Rs 25,000 crore will still come if the government fails to offload its minority stake in steel major SAIL.

Although the government has so far raised just over Rs 6,900 crore, plans are afoot to expedite the process of stake sale in the next two-and-a-half months to meet the target.

The Cabinet has already approved disinvestment in host of state-owned companies including SAIL, MMTC, NALCO, RINL, BHEL and Engineers India.

The official further said that with the sale of residual stake in Hindustan Zinc and Balco, as has been suggested by the Kelkar committee on fiscal consolidation, the government would be able to exceed the Rs 30,000 crore target.

The Finance Ministry has sought Law Ministry's opinion on the residual stake sale in the two companies, which are currently owned by Vedanta Resources.