Plan panel seeks review of stay on Nalco sell-off

NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission has sought to re-open the issue of Nalco’s privatisation. The commission’s high-profile member NK Singh wants the mines ministry to seek a Cabinet opinion on the divestment of the aluminium maker.
The privatisation move was put on hold by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee following protests from the Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-led state government, employees and others.
The prime minister had apparently assured the Orissa CM that there would be no privatisation or disinvestment of Nalco. This put a spoke in the disinvestment ministry’s plans to proceed with the two-tranche public issues involving an offer for the sale of 10% of the company’s shares in the domestic market, and then an ADR issue for another 20% of the government holding.
The disinvestment ministry had proposed to delink the offer of the sale of shares, a more acceptable mode of divestment, from the strategic sale for nearly 30% of the government holding, in a bid to complete one phase of dilution of the government holding.
At a quarterly performance review of the mines ministry late last week, Mr Singh told the officials to move the Cabinet for a view endorsing or reviewing the prime minister’s July decision.
It may be recalled that although the privatisation of the PSU was put on hold on two occasions, neither the disinvestment ministry nor the mines ministry had sought a Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD) view on either, holding the proposal or taking the PSU off the list of enterprises to be privatised.
The privatisation had been put on hold for the first time early November ‘02 after a team of executives from the AV Birla group and the government’s advisors ABN Amro-Rothschild-Enam were roughed up by workers when they arrived at the plant for due diligence.