New Delhi: The Centre has asked at least a couple of major public sector companies, including IOC (Indian Oil Corporation) and ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation), to prepare itself to take part in the disinvestment process of BPCL (Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd), said a report by The Hindustan Times on Tuesday. The paper quoted two officials privy to the developments.
The officials said on the condition of anonymity that the participation of IOC and ONGC was a contingency measure, just in case private bidders don't actively participate. BPCL's strategic disinvestment by March 31 is crucial to the government achieving its disinvestment target, they said. "It is also possible that a consortium of public sector companies, led by either ONGC or IOC, could bid for the government's stake in BPCL.
However, it could be the last resort and proposed to be exercised only if disinvestment of the company to private entities would appear difficult within this financial year," an official was quoted as saying by the paper. The economy is going through a slowdown for the last six straight quarters in the financial year 2019-20. Despite setting an ambitious disinvestment goal of Rs 1.05 lakh crore in the July budget, it has only managed to accumulate Rs 17,364.26 crore through disinvestment so far.
Another official felt that the government would probably adopt a disinvestment model similar to that of HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd) where the stakes were sold off in the last quarter of 2017-18. Early in 2018, ONGC bought the Centre's entire stake of 51.11 percent in HPCL for Rs 36,915 crore. "Such transactions also attract minimum resistance as the controlling stake of one PSU is transferred to another PSU," the other official told the paper.
Following is the list of 28 CPSEs, subsidiaries, units and joint ventures for which the government has given 'in-principle' approval for strategic disinvestment: The Final List
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