Finmin hopes to raise R13,000 cr from PSU stake sale by December
“We are hopeful that disinvestment will pick up and about R12,000-13,000 crore will come in by December. For the full fiscal, we expect to raise R30,000 crore,” said department of economic affairs (DEA) secretary Arvind Mayaram. Finance ministry officials are engaging in hectic parleys with the PSUs to speed up the process so that the disinvestments can take place in the December and March quarters.
The Department of Disinvestment (DoD), the nodal department for conducting PSU stake sale, has already secured Cabinet approval for stake sale in five companies — Oil India, MMTC, Hindustan Copper, NMDC and Nalco — which could fetch about R15,000 crore to the exchequer.
“We have a target of fiscal deficit at 5.3% for the current fiscal. We aim to bring it down to 3% by 2016-17,” Mayaram said, ruling out any further borrowing by the government. “We will control the deficit by reducing our expenditure and realising funds from PSU disinvestment,” he said. Although the government had pegged fiscal deficit for the current financial year at 5.1% in the Budget, it will not be able to achieve the target in view of a rising subsidy bill and lower buoyancy in tax collection.
With nearly seven months of the fiscal about to get over, the government is yet to start its disinvestment programme,
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