Finance Ministry to delay launch of PSU’s exchange traded fund
With the blockbuster response to the NMDC issue, the finance ministry is planning to push back the launch of the exchange traded fund of listed state-owned units and to 2013-14 will instead concentrate only on public offers in the current fiscal.
“There is still a lot of planning involved for the ETFs and its unlikely to be finalised by March. The thinking now is to launch it in early 2013-14,” a senior finance ministry official said.
The department of disinvestment has already floated a proposal for approval by the Cabinet and is expected to advertise for an asset management company for the ETF next week. Earlier it had appointed ICICI Securities as the adviser for creation of the fund, which is expected to include stocks of blue chip PSUs such as ONGC, BHEL and Power Finance Corporation.
“The final decision on which of the PSUs will be included in the fund will be taken by the group of ministers on disinvestment after the Cabinet approval is in place,” the official said, adding that it would have a corpus of about Rs 5,000 crore. Employees of the PSUs that are a part of the fund would also be eligible for a five per cent discount.
In the meantime, the finance ministry is expected to focus on disinvestment through public offers. It is planning to sell equity in PSUs including NTPC Ltd, Oil India Ltd (OIL), National Aluminum Company Ltd (Nalco) and MMTC Ltd in the remaining three months of the fiscal.
