London-based Vedanta Resources’ likely revised offer for buying the government’s residual stakes in Hindustan Zinc (HZL) and Bharat Aluminium (Balco) is what the finance ministry would depend on to meet its PSU stake sale target this fiscal.
After its January 2012 offer to buy these stakes for some R17,000 crore was rejected by the government, Vedanta sought its shareholders’ nod in August to raise the offer by about 25%.
The Anil Agarwal-led company, however, has not made its formal offer to the government as yet for buying out the government’s residual 49% stake in Balco and 29.5% in HZL.
Disinvestment secretary MH Khan said the department was awaiting Vedanta’s offer for HZL and Balco. “We have not yet got the revised offer,” he said.
Speaking at the economic editors’ conference here, finance minister P Chidambaram on Monday said the government has lined up PSU stake sales for the next five months to meet the Rs 30,000-crore disinvestment target for 2012-13, but said it will not rush if market conditions are not congenial.
The government is considering stake sale in NTPC, NMDC, PowerGrid, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) and Engineers India in the next five months.
“The first case (RINL) is lined up before the HLC (high-level committee on disinvestment) this month. There is a timeline,” Chidambaram said.
While the government was trying to speed up disinvestment, the minister said “these are not distress sales. I will be quite happy to meet the target.?
