State governments urged to set up selloff panel

NEW DELHI: State governments should set up an independent disinvestment commission through a legislative process to take up disinvestment of state owned public sector enterprises, a study group of the Planning Commission has recommended in an unreleased report.
The report has also recommended that the legislation should specify the enterprises that could be privatised, the method of valuations to be adopted, an enterprise specific calendar for disinvestment and the method for reporting to the state legislature.
It added that the Disinvestment Commission may consist of economists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, public enterprises managers and labour experts.
The enterprise that should be disinvested or retained by the government should be decided by a matrix approach for their relevance as per three parameter: public purpose, profitability and mobilisation.
Only those that are high on all three parameters should be retained by the state government and those that are low on all three should be divested, the report suggests. Those falling in between could be restructured.