The lack of subscription to public offers in the government-owned companies has become a matter of concern for the disinvestment department that is putting in place a robust pipeline of companies that can tap the markets in coming years.
Public sector undertakings are finding it hard to convince their own employees to participate in the disinvestment programme and none of the companies saw full subscription of the entire quota reserved for their workforce in public offers since the last fiscal, disinvestment secretary Sumit Bose said. ?The best subscription we had was of REC, which went up to 75%. In some companies it has been as low as 20-25%,? Bose said. ?REC is a very urban type of corporation with limited number of employees. Its strength is that and many of them are in the head quarters. On the other hand, let us look at NMDC. Spread all over in some of the remotest corners of the country, much of it is inaccessible to lot of grades of employees,? Bose pointed out.
Opening Demat accounts for employees of Coal India, which is set to tap the market, is a huge task that the government is facing today. It is considering stake sale through public offerings in MMTC Ltd, Coal India Ltd, SAIL, Shipping Corporation of India, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, Manganese Ore India Ltd and Hindustan Copper India Ltd, minister of state in finance Namo Narain Meena told Parliament.
Besides, the government plans to sell 5% stake in ONGC and 10% in Indian Oil Corp to raise about Rs 21,000 crore this fiscal, oil secretary S Sundareshan said last week.