Disinvestment: Finally some light at the end of tunnel
The non-starter Rs 30,000-crore disinvestment programme of the government got a little boost towards the close of the year bringing cheer to policy makers and raising hopes that it might inch closer to the ambitious target during the remaining three months of 2012-13.
After several aborted attempts, the government offloaded the shares of Hindustan Copper in November – the first disinvestment of the current financial year of 2012-13.
It fetched the government Rs 808 crore, with bulk of the equity being purchased by the state-run banks and LIC.
However, the big one was NMDC stake sale in December, yielding Rs 6,000 crore. It also generated interest among foreign investors, raising expectations that state-owned financial institutions will not have to bail out the PSU stake sale programme of the government.
The pipeline for disinvestment is quite long and includes over 10 blue chip companies such as NTPC, BHEL, Sail, MMTC and Oil India.
Although there was a long lull before it, the year 2012 began with the offloading the shares of oil major ONGC. The issue was subscribed 98.3 per cent and the government raised Rs 12,767 crore through auctioning of shares in March.
Besides, initial public offer (IPO) of NBCC helped the government to realise Rs 154 crore in April.
The year saw disinvestment, which had a host of bluechip PSU lined up for selling minority stake of government, getting marred by controversies as retail and institutional stayed away from bidding citing high prices.
The NMDC issue,
