FM Nirmala Sitharaman nudges ministries to meet targets for asset monetisation

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday took stock of the progress made by ministries and departments on the National Monetisation Pipeline. The minister nudged ministries to push ahead with asset monetisation in line with their set targets.

While some ministries may miss their monetisation goals, the government will "more or less" meet this year's target, a government official said.

For the current fiscal year, the government's target is to raise ₹1.62 lakh crore from asset monetisation.


Last fiscal year, it had completed transactions worth ₹96,000 crore, surpassing the target of ₹88,000 crore.

According to people familiar with the deliberations of the review meeting, the minister asked ministries of petroleum and natural gas and railways to rework their strategies to hasten monetisation.

The petroleum and natural gas ministry has been asked to come up with a fresh plan within a week, one of the people said.

The meeting was attended by top officials from the finance ministry, Niti Aayog and key infrastructure ministries.

The review meeting is crucial as the Centre is starting preparations for the next union budget. Achieving the target is critical to push for more capital expenditure and stick to the fiscal path.

Asset monetisation has largely been driven by auctions of mines, road assets and power sector assets. Ministries of petroleum and natural gas and railways had missed targets last fiscal year.