Department of Public Enterprises reallocated to Finance Ministry

The government Wednesday reallocated the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE), the nodal agency for all public sector enterprises, to the finance ministry from the ministry of heavy industries.

DPE is responsible for evaluation and monitoring performance of central public sector enterprises or CPSEs besides reviewing their capital expenditure. This will now be the sixth department in the finance ministry besides economic affairs, revenue, expenditure, financial services and Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM).

A gazette notification issued on July 6 said among other roles, DPE will continue to look at measures aimed at improving performance of CPSEs and other capacity building initiatives of public sector enterprises.


“They could have rather merged it with DIPAM, as it already has additional roles besides just overseeing the disinvestment process,” said a former disinvestment secretary.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been holding meetings with CPSEs and their administrative ministries to review the capital expenditure (capex) and to accelerate the economic growth in the background of Covid-19 pandemic.

Co-operation Ministry
Separately, the government also announced setting up 'Ministry of Co-operation’ for realizing the vision of ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’.

"This ministry will provide a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country," it noted in a statement.