New Delhi, June 19: In a bid to streamline the privatisation process, the disinvestment department has prepared a three-year plan, which will be placed before the cabinet committee on disinvestment (CCD) on June 23. There is also an annual programme for which approval of the CCD will be sought."The three-year annual plan would be similar in its approach to the five-year plans," disinvestment secretary Pradip Baijal said. The plan has laid down the disinvestment process in detail. Baijal, however, refused to divulge the details of the plan. The streamlined process would pace up privatisation, he said.
The CCD approval to the plan will give a boost to the sell-off programme, which has been opposed by a variety of people, the most-important ones being within the Union cabinet. Minister of heavy industries and public enterprises Manohar Joshi has expressed his reservations publicly and in presence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Similarly, minister of petroleum and natural gas Ram Naik is againstdisinvestment in Indian Oil Corporation and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on the grounds that oil is of "strategic importance".
Communications minister Ram Vilas Paswan, too, is not an enthusiastic supporter of privatisation. Civil aviation minister Sharad Yadav's views on the subject are also well-known.
In this context, the CCD meet on June 23 has assumed great importance. Disinvestment minister Arun Jaitley will have to plead his case with cogency to convince the CCD that any dithering or delay in the sell-off programme will be bad for public-sector units, the economy, and the tax-payer.Finance minister Yashwant Sinha has set Rs 11,000 crore (including Rs 1,000 crore to retire public debt) as the disinvestment target for the current fiscal. There has been a lot of scepticism regarding the achievement of this target. The most-important reason for this is that the last fiscal's target of Rs 10,000 crore was only partially achieved.
Though the department under Jaitley was able to execute the firstgenuine privatisation (Modern Foods), and the programme seemed to be catching momentum, considerable opposition has surfaced in the last few months. With one minister after the other expressing his anti-privatisation views, achieving the Rs 11,000-crore target seemed difficult.
The department, however, hopes the CCD will approve its three-year plan. This, in turn, would accelerate the sell-off process.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.