Govt plans to close residual stake sale in 6 mths

KOLKATA: The disinvestment ministry intends to complete the sale of government’s residual stakes in VSNL, CMC, IBP, IPCL and Balco through the public route within six months.
Confirming this, union disinvestment minister Arun Shourie said,“We have just initiated discussions with our strategic partners in each of the five divested PSUs. The timing of actual offloading of the government’s residual holdings will depend on the advice of our global advisors. We expect to wind up the exercise in six months.�
The strategic partners (for instance, the Tatas, in case of VSNL) in the five PSUs will need to give up their privileged claim on the government’s residual holdings before the government can actually offer the stakes to the public through the proposed book-building route.
Mr Shourie was talking to reporters soon after the inaugural of Cognizant Technology Solutions’ trendy Technocomplex in Kolkata. Cognizant has pumped in Rs 36 crore in the Kolkata software development centre, which was inaugurated by West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
For starters, around 930 software professionals will be operating at the Cognizant facility and subsequently, the manpower strength will be ramped up to nearly 1,600. Bulk of the hiring will be done locally, according to Cognizant officials.
Speaking on the occasion, Cognizant president & COO N Lakshmi Narayanan said, “Cognizant planned to set up a similar software development centre in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Kolkata is the third after Chennai and Pune.� In ‘03, the company proposes to invest $25m (around Rs 125 crore) in ramping up existing facilities. “Our cash reserves are at $130m, hence we have enough funds to meet future capex requirements and don’t need to go for fresh round of funding,� Mr Narayanan said.
The Cognizant management is also scouting for a JV partner to kick off BPO operations in a major way. “We are talking to several local and overseas players operating in the high-value added BPO space like transactions-processing, financial services and healthcare segments,� said Mr Narayanan.