After a lull, the Centre has given a big push to its disinvestment drive this fiscal by approving 10 per cent stake sale in Coal India (CIL) and giving the green signal to the initial public offer (IPO) of Cochin Shipyard.
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Coal India, which accounts for 80 per cent of domestic output, produced 462 million tonnes (mt) in 2013-14 against a target of 482mt.
It may be noted that the government in the budget had set a mammoth disinvestment target of Rs 69,500 crore for this financial year. Coal India’s scrip closed at Rs 334.95 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday, up 0.83% from its previous close.
After the disinvestment of 10 per cent equity, the government of India’s shareholding in CIL would come down to 68.65 per cent (with slight variation based on outcome of sale of one per cent equity shares to employees of CIL).
On Tuesday, Jaitley told Bloomberg TV India in Dubai that there is a “conscious hold back” on a few of the disinvestment because of the turmoil in the global market.
The CCEA’s approval is for issue of 3,39,84,000 shares of Rs. 10 each, out of which fresh issue would be 2,26,56,000 shares and sale of the central government’s holding in the company to the tune of 1,13,28,000 shares, a CCEA statement said. He pointed out that over the past decade, the CSL’s turnover had increased five-fold while its profit had gone up from ₹94 crore to ₹235 crore a year.
So far, the government has mopped up 12,701.33 crore through stake sales in Indian Oil Corp (Rs 9,369 crore), Power Finance Corp (Rs 1,671 crore), REC (Rs 1,608 crore) and Dredging Corporation of India (Rs 53.33 crore).
Meanwhile, the decision of the stalled projects of NHAI is also a welcome move.
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“The cabinet has taken a very bold decision to allow the ministry of road transport and highways to go into the merits of each case and wherever the delays are not attributable to the developer, to extend the tolling period if that should be required and take such measures, which will once again revive these toll projects and get them to operation”.
