Niti Aayog pushes divestment of PSUs' ball in government's court

NITI Aayog submitted a roadmap for closure and strategic sale of government stake in some public sector units to the Prime Minister's Office. The agency has submitted two separate lists of state-run companies, one comprising of sick PSUs which may be closed down and the other a list of firms which should be privatized.

NITI Aayog has identified about 26 companies out of the total 74 loss-making companies for closure, five for long-term lease or management contract; three have been proposed to be merged with the parent company; while two have been identified for maintaining status quo.

The NITI Aayog’s roadmap deals with two issues such as decision regarding sick firms which are making losses and other one is strategic sale where government wants to reduce stake. According to NITI Aayog, strategic sale means the government will bring down its stake in PSUs to 49 per cent or below. Earlier, the government had alloted a task for identifying PSUs for strategic sale.

Government has set a disinvestment target of Rs 56500 crore for FY17. Out of this, Rs 36000 crore will probably come from minority stake sale in PSUs and Rs 20500 crore from strategic sale. During FY16, the government managed to slash up Rs 25312 crore through disinvestment, which is almost 36.42 per cent of the target of Rs 69500 crore.

The government kick-started the disinvestment programme for the current financial year with 11.36 per cent stake sale in NHPC and raised Rs 2700 crore through the process. It has lined up 15 PSUs, including Coal India, NMDC, MOIL, MMTC, National Fertilisers, NALCO and Bharat Electronics, for stake sale in FY17.