RITES becomes India's 16th Navratna PSU

New Delhi: RITES Limited, a PSU under the Ministry of Railways involved in transport consultancy and the engineering sector, has now been upgraded to Navratna status, the company informed the exchanges on Thursday. RITES has become the 16th Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) in India to have been granted the Navratna status.

Why has RITES Ltd been granted Navratna status?

The government categorises all Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) in three categories, namely Maharatna, Navratna and Miniratna. To get Navratna status, the PSU should be a Miniratna-I, Schedule 'A' company, should have obtained 'excellent' or 'very good' MoU rating in three of the last five years and must have a composite score of 60 in six performance indicators.

For a company to achieve the Navratna status, it must report a net profit of more than Rs 5,000 crore for three consecutive years and maintain an average annual turnover of Rs 25,000 crore for three years or have an annual average net worth of over Rs 15,000 crore for three years.

How will it benefit RITES Ltd?

The status allows the Board of Directors of these CPSEs the power to allow mergers and acquisitions in India and abroad. However, they need an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) to make investments abroad.  The Chief Executive of the PSE gets the power to approve business tours abroad of functional directors up to five days’ duration (other than study tours, seminars, etc) in emergency, under intimation to the Secretary of the administrative ministry.

RITES offers transport infrastructure consultancy, railway inspection, rolling stock leasing and maintenance and other related services.

The list of other 15 Navratna PSUs of India include Bharat Electronics Limited, Container Corporation of India Limited, Engineers India Limited, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, National Aluminium Company Limited, National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited, Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited, NMDC Limited, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, Shipping Corporation of India Limited, Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, ONGC Videsh Ltd, Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Limited and IRCON.

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