Key highlights of the interview with Vedanta Resources Chairman Anil Agarwal

Anil Agarwal, Vedanta Resources Chairman

India is in a sweet spot with abundant natural resources, a thriving start-up culture, and the government is moving in the right direction; however, it needs to move faster, opines Anil Agarwal, founder and Chairman of Vedanta Resources Limited.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Agarwal spoke on a range of topics such as the BPCL divestment plan and would Vedanta be bidding for it, why the government should go for corporatisation of public sector entities instead of privatisation and how can India ensure energy security.

1. The biggest thing that has happened is that now we don’t have to chase state governments, they are competing among each other to chase us and get investments because they understand they need development.

2. There is a lot of foreign interference; They think they can use the judiciary process with help from NGOs to create a disturbance so that industry cannot come up. People don't want India to produce, people want India to be a market.

3. Privatisation process takes too long, corporatisation would work faster. Government should just sell shares in the share market and reduce their holding to zero.

BPCL Privatisation

4. Govt said they have withdrawn the offer (for BPCL privatisation), and they will come back with a new strategy. No point discussing it right now. When they come to market, we will see.

5. The government should give (oil) blocks to private players for 50 years or till the mine life. Going to the government for renewal every five or ten years will not attract foreigners. We need to stop calling these companies contractors and see them as owners.

I want startup people to own one drilling machine and with technology work on exploration. Don’t give licenses only to big people. But allow the start-ups to trade it, because he may not find the money to develop it into a big mine. They can explore, discover, trade the block and start on new projects.

6. Forest clearance is the biggest problem in India, we can make the environmental norms that allow self-certification possible. If we really want oil and gas energy security in this country, we need at least 20-30 companies to come in.

7. Every country is producing coal but they are pushing only India not to open up. Can you believe that India has only one coal company? Exploration is the lowest in the world in India. We should have hundreds and thousands of people doing explorations, they will find enough funding.

8. We're looking at 300,000 barrels in two years’ time and 500,000 barrels in three years’ time. We are going from $20 billion to $30 billion in terms of revenue. So, we are increasing our production of zinc, and aluminum.

9. We will convert 25% of our power consumption of 9,000 megawatts to renewable energy.

10. This company is an institution and my children are very competitive and competent, they should create another Vedanta. Vedanta is run by the management, and each of the companies has the best CEO. They are driving the company very well individually and the central position is very good. We have shareholders and I am there as a figurehead, a designer. I design and develop the fundamental strategy.

Ownership and management should be separate. I will keep withdrawing, keeping the management on the top. Slowly the CEOs will get more empowered and run the company and make the shareholders happy. We will see what happens, the company will grow and can definitely make $50 billion revenue.