Rs 78,000 crore a small target after all the clearances: DoD

NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing controversies over divestment process, the Disinvestment Ministry on Wednesday claimed that it could easily garner many times more funds than the disinvestment target of Rs 78,000 crore for the 10th Plan provided decks were cleared by the political executive.
"We can raise much more resources than the target of Rs 78,000 crore set for the Tenth Plan period if all the disinvestment related issues are cleared by the political executive," said Disinvestment Secretary Pradeep Baijal.
At the same time he expressed concern that the disinvestment process had slowed down considerably and warned that even the target of Rs 12,000 crore set for the current financial year was difficult to be achieved in the present circumstances.
He, however, declined to comment on the ongoing political debate on whether the government should not sell equity in profit making PSUs or whether disinvestment should be pursued through public offerings and not strategic sale route.
"It is for the political executive to take a decision on these issues. Once we are told of the decision we can proceed. As such we have put in place a transparent process which allows disinvestment at much lesser time than what was experienced say in case of IBP and Co," he said.
On the potential of the resource mobilisation through disinvestment if given the go ahead, Baijal said "it is possible to raise Rs 11 lakh crore or 9 or 6 lakh crore through disinvestment provided political process permitted."
He said that government has so far disinvested only 1.13 per cent of its total equity holding in the PSUs from which it has realised around Rs 11,000 crore.
After the deferment of a decision on disinvestment in oil PSUs the cooperation from officials of the administrative Ministries and executives of PSUs, slated to be put on the block, was much less, Baijal regretted.
He claimed that disinvestment of the two oil PSUs -- Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum-- could be completed in about 8-9 months as against 17 months taken in the case of oil marketing PSU IBP & Co.
Pointing out that it was not just the profit making units which were generating revenues, Baijal said government had raised a lot of money from loss making companies as well.
The Secretary further added that process being adopted by government had withstood the tests laid down by judiciary in over 40 odd cases including Balco judegement delivered by Supreme Court last year.
Asked about Congress President Sonia Gandhi''s remarks that government should not divest stake in profit making companies, Baijal said he could not comment on the stand taken by either side of political spectrum but pointed out that Congress party governments in states such as Punjab and Karnataka were pursuing disinvestment including that in profitable PSUs.
He went onto add that it was under the Congress regime that first move towards liberalisation and privatisation was made.