"Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will also not be barred from bidding for the remaining two plants of IPCL," Mr Dhindsa told PTI in an interview a day after Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment decided to demerge IPCL's Baroda plant and start the process of disinvestment for the remaining plants afresh. "Both IOC and IPCL are PSUs and we will soon hold a meeting with the two for transaction of the Baroda plant transfer," he said, adding that asset valuation would start either by the month-end or early next month. Disinvestment Ministry officials in the meanwhile said that global bids for IPCL's Nagathone and Gandha plants would be invited within two months.

Asked about financial restructuring of Paradeep PhosphateLtd (PPL), where the CCD has decided to offload the government's 74 per cent stake to a strategic partner, Mr Dhindsa said he would soon approach the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs with an `appropriate' proposal for strengthening of the PSU.

Asked if IOC, as a PSU, would be kept out of bidding for strategic partnership in IPCL, where the government has decided to divest 25 of its 51 per cent holding, Mr Dhindsa said the corporation would be very much allowed to participate in global bidding.

Reliance and the Soros Chatterjee group were shortlisted for strategic partnership in IPCL in response to the government's earlier invitation for bids while IOC had been kept out on the grounds that it was a PSU. IOC later joined Soros for a joint bid.

When contacted, Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie said transfer of the Baroda plant was expected to be completed during the current financial year itself. Mr Dhindsa said the government decided to hand over the plant, located on IOC's land, to the latter and added that the Baroda plant, having a capacity of 144,000 tonne of ethylene, was taking all the feedstock from the Fortune 500 corporation's adjoining refinery.

The fertiliser ministry's proposal for PPL's restructuring was likely to include waiver of loans and interests totalling about Rs 200 crore apart from a cash injection of an estimated Rs 50 crore, government sources said.The government is also expected to reduce preferential equity in the corporation by about Rs 60 crore as part of efforts to cleanse PPL's balancesheet before privatisation of the corporation, which is entrusted mainly import of decontrolled phosphatic fertilisers in the country.