Not real disinvestment

Buybacks are hardly the way to exceed targets

The government has beaten its disinvestment target. This is so unusual an occurrence that it deserves a closer look. After all, successive Union Budgets have tended to set ambitious targets for revenue from the sale of state assets and have then under-performed. If that has now changed, then it reflects considerably to the credit of the central government. However, a closer look throws up one or two questions. For one, this is not the original disinvestment target from the 2016-17 Union Budget that is being met or surpassed; this is a “revised” target that was introduced when the Union Budget