Cabinet Panel On Divestment Meeting Tomorrow

The crucial Cabinet committee on disinvestment is to meet tomorrow where proposals on the divestment of Air India and several other public sector undertakings are expected to be taken up.

Sources said that the Cabinet is expected to take up several cases and could also discuss the divestment of Maruti during the Cabinet meeting. This would be the third time the Cabinet committee on divestment is meeting. The proposal on Air India had got deferred after the last meeting in April.

Last week minister for information and broadcasting and disinvestment Arun Jaitley said that about 30 to 40 PSUs are likely to be put into the pipeline for privatisation during the current financial year.

 

Sources clarified that even though the Cabinet is not expected to clear a proposal for the divestment of government stake in Maruti, some decision could be taken in context with the strategy to be undertaken by the administrative ministry for the divestment.

Apart from this, public sector undertakings such as Kudremukh, Rastriya Chemicals Fertiliser are also expected to be taken up by the Cabinet.

Earlier, speaking at a press conference Union civil aviation minister Sharad Yadav said that the crucial issues on the extent of divestment in Air India as well as the extent of foreign airline participation would only be decided after the Cabinet meeting.

He however said that the ministry of civil aviation had written to finance minister Yashwant Sinha for additional funds to the tune of Rs 750 crore to enable the purchase of one aircraft for Air India. Apart from this, Yadav also said that the aviation ministry was planning to take six additional aircraft on dry lease for Air India. Yadav clarified that the aircraft to be purchased would be used for linking Delhi to Frankfurt.

Even though the divestment department wanted to clean up the balance sheet of Air India before clearing the proposal for the divestment in the company, sources said after this new proposal from the aviation ministry the issue on the manner Air India would be privatised would now be decided by the Cabinet.