New Delhi: At the end of December 2020, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) has managed to raise Rs 12,778.36 crore from disinvestment against the target of Rs 2.1 lakh crore, data sourced from DIPAM showed. The government looks set to miss its disinvestment target for the financial year since it now has only one quarter to make up for the humongous shortfall. The government's disinvestment plans for the year have progressed slowly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with DIPAM announcing multiple deadline extensions for strategic disinvestments of various public sector companies based on requests received from potential investors.
According to the data sourced from DIPAM, the government has receipts from seven minority stake disinvestments so far. The Centre has raised Rs 4,924.17 crore from the disinvestment of nearly 15 percent share in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) through Offer for Sale (OFS). And another Rs 771.46 crore has come from the minority stake sale of 12.82 percent share in Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) via OFS. An initial public offer (IPO) of Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDSL) yielded Rs 442.79 crore, a share buyback by RITES yielded Rs 173.16 crore, and by KIOCL yielded Rs 155.72 crore. The IRCTC OFS fetched Rs 4,473.16 crore. And DIPAM categorised Rs 1,837.84 crore under the 'others' category.
At the end of December 2020, DIPAM's total receipts from PSUs stood at Rs 26,511.49 crore. This includes Rs 13,733.13 crore received in the form of dividends by the government from PSUs. And the balance amount came from the seven minority stake disinvestment carried out between April and December 2020.
According to data sourced from DIPAM, the government raised Rs 10,992 crore from bond Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) by December-end.
The government announced an ambitious privatisation policy for the public sector earlier this year when it said that it would retain a maximum of one to four PSUs in strategic sectors and disinvest the ones in non-strategic sectors. However, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, not one strategic disinvestment announced by the government has been completed so far. The disinvestment of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Air India has entered the second stage of the transaction process, as the deadline for the submission of Expression of Interest (EoI) closed in November and December, respectively. The government recently floated Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM) for the sale of Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and Pawan Hans and is likely to invite EoIs for CONCOR soon. The government will also look to make progress in the LIC IPO over the next quarter. However, it's unlikely that any of these deals will be wrapped up in the fourth quarter of the financial year.
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