Four and a half months of the current financial year have passed but the government has not done anything special on the front of disinvestment. Although the government plans to liquidate shares of many companies in the current financial year. 6-7 government companies are in line for disinvestment in this financial year.
Disinvestment plan of these companies
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had set the investment target while presenting the budget for the financial year 2023-24 in the month of February. In the current fiscal year’s budget, the government has set a target of Rs 51,000 crore for disinvestment. Companies like Shipping Corporation of India, NMDC Steel, BEML, HLL Life Care, Container Corporation of India and Vizag Steel are planned to be privatized during this financial year. Apart from these, the government is also looking to sell its stake in IDBI Bank in the current financial year.
The target was not met after 2018-19.
Going by the record of the last few years, it is not easy for the government to achieve the disinvestment target. For the last 4 years, the government has not been able to achieve its disinvestment target. The last time the government was able to achieve the investment target was 5 years ago. The government had set an investment target of Rs 80,000 crore during the financial year 2018-19, while the government managed to raise Rs 84,972 crore this year. Every year since then, the government has fallen short of the target.
The target was much higher in the last financial year.
In the last financial year too, the government was far behind the target. For the financial year 2022-23 ending March 31, 2023, the government had set a target of raising Rs 50,000 crore from disinvestment, but could only raise Rs 35,294 crore. This situation happened when the state-owned airline Air India was privatized during the last financial year itself.
Success here last year
In the last financial year, the long-stalled privatization of Air India was completed and it was bought by the Tata Group. The IPO of state-run insurance company LIC also came only during the last financial year. The government had sold 3.5 percent stake in LIC’s IPO. Similarly, the government was also able to sell its outstanding stakes in Paradip Phosphates, IPCL and Tata Communications during the last financial year.
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