Govt expecting Rs 24,000 cr from disinvestment

The government expects to mop up a tidy Rs 24,000 crore in this fiscal with four more public issues of state-owned companies hitting the capital market in the next two-and-a-half months.

"We may (get) close to double than what our supplementaries are (receipts shown from disinvestment in the first batch of supplementary demands for grants)," Disinvestment Secretary Sunil Mitra told private TV news channnel in an interview.

The government had initially in the Budget for 2009-10 proposed to raise Rs 1,120 crore from disinvestment, but later increased the expected receipts to Rs 12,200 crore while presenting the first batch of supplementary demands for grants in Parliament in December.

It now expects to get about Rs 24,000 crore by offloading equity in six PSUs, two of which -- Oil India (OIL) and National Hydro-electric Power Corporation (NHPC) -- have already been completed yielding government about Rs 3,000 crore.

The government proposes to complete stake sale in NTPC, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) by end of March, Mitra said, adding the "we could look at fairly large number of IPOs and FPOs next year".

Higher receipts from disinvestment would provide some respite to the Finance Ministry which is struggling to contain the fiscal deficit which is budgeted to go up to 6.8 per cent of the GDP from 6.2 per cent a year ago.