 "Jayant Sinha")
The government is planning to lower its stake in IDBI Bank as it wants the troubled lender to transform the way Axis Bank did, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Tuesday.
"We'll consider transforming IDBI Bank in a manner similar to the way Axis Bank was done," Sinha told reporters on the sidelines of an event here, in response to a question on the shortfall likely in the divestment target and the options available before the government.
"We still have quite a number of opportunities even on divestment side," he said, but admitted that they may have to halve the target from more than Rs 64,000 crore. "The FM has already said that for IDBI, we are evaluating whether it is possible to effect a transformation like we have done for Axis Bank."
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Speculation is rife the government might cut its stake in the infra lender-turned-commercial bank to below 49 per cent, which may mean ceding absolute control in the bank.
Axis Bank was created after state-run fund manager UTI went bust in the early 1990s and the asset management company was hived off into three entities. The government today is the single largest shareholder and the rest is owned by state-run banks, financial institutions and state-run insurers.
In another development, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday called the disinvestment target challenging due to global issues. Speaking at an event in Delhi, he said lower receipts would not upset fiscal maths and there would be no difficulty in meeting the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent set for the current financial year. Jaitley also launched two taxpayer friendly measures - eSahyog and PAN camps - to streamline the taxation procedure.
"The objective of the I-T department is to make life as easy as possible for the assessee and difficult only for those who consciously evade and avoid taxes," he said while launching the twin initiatives of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The e-Sahyog scheme was aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. It would provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in I-T returns of taxpayers whose returns have not been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the I-T Office.
The PAN camps are aimed at expanding the coverage of number of people through the Permanent Account Number (PAN). About While 230 million PAN card have been issued, only 50 million people file income tax returns.
Jaitley also said aspirational India is not satisfied with the current growth rate, which is way below the country's potential.
GDP growth slowed to 7 per cent in the April-June quarter, from 7.5 per cent in the previous quarter, amid deceleration in farm, services and manufacturing sectors.
