Government may consider 80 PSUs for asset sale or disinvestment

NEW DELHI: The government plans to examine around 80 state-owned companies for either strategic stake sale or sale of some assets or units under its renewed disinvestment programme, a senior official said.

The unique selling point (USP) of these central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) will be the various clearances that will come with such a sale along with the ready infrastructure made available, said the official.

In his budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley had noted that the government will encourage CPSEs to divest individual assets like land and manufacturing units to release their asset value for making investment in new projects. “We have to leverage the assets of CPSEs for generation of resources for investment in new projects,” he had said.


The government official quoted earlier said that in some cases the buyer, or successor entity “will not require various clearances such as environmental and also land that are some of the biggest impediments India Inc is facing”.

He said the list of selected CPSEs will be submitted to NITI Aayog, which will examine the possibility and mode of divestment based on strengths of these firms.

The government has budgeted Rs 56,500 crore of revenues from disinvestment next fiscal, including Rs 20,500 crore from strategic sales. The disinvestment target for FY 15-16 was Rs 69,500 crore, which has been revised to Rs 25,312 crore.

“In the past, department of public enterprises (DPE) had made a list of all firms and land bank available with them. Then we have the Fourteenth Finance Commission report, which has also listed out strategic and non-strategic firms,” said the official, adding that the land bank available with loss making enterprises alone is estimated to be around 2.5 lakh acres.

Some of the firms where the government may fast track the process include Hindustan Photo films, Tungabhadra Steel, Hindustan Cables, and Tyre Corporation.