Indian Government Wants to Raise Rs 40k Crore from PSU Stake Sale

Disinvestment of India

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said that the Indian Government wants to raise at least Rs 40,000 crore from the stake sale in Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) in the next fiscal year, which is starting from April 1, 2013.

He said that the government was quite hopeful about raising the said money from PSU stakes. This is a part of government’s disinvestment process to reduce the fiscal deficit of the country i.e. highly needed for fiscal consolidation procedure.

Finance Minister had an online chat session with the common people of India to discuss on the various issues related to the General Budget of 2013-14 in a very popular social networking site this week. In the chat session he said, "I hope to collect Rs.40, 000 crore from disinvestment next year. The first disinvestment will start in April."

While answering a question, which was asked by a reputed industrialist Anand Mahindra, Mr. Chidambaram said that he was quite optimistic that the government would succeed to raise at least Rs 14,000 crore from the sale of the government’s stake in some of the major public sector firms of India.

During the fiscal year of 2013-14, the Indian Government is expecting to raise Rs 54,000 crore from the sale of stake in various companies. So it is highly expected that the disinvestment process will be accelerated by the government in the next financial year.

In the running financial year, which will end on March 31, the government is expected to raise at most Rs 24,000 crore in total from the proposed disinvestment procedure. The government has failed to complete its budgetary target of raising Rs 30,000 crore from the same. So it is indeed a matter of debate that the government would succeed to complete the new target in the next fiscal year. Just a few days back Crisil reported that the Indian Government likely to miss revenue growth target.

Chidambaram answered a few more questions on Google Hangout, which is a online video chat that can be accessible by many people at a go. He made a record by doing so, as it is the first time ever that a finance minister of India chose this type of tool to interact with the citizens of India.

Finance Minister added that his main focus in the national economic budget was to push forward the ongoing growth process by stabilizing the current situation of Macro-economic sectors. “We are trying to stabilize our economy and get the growth engine started,’ he said while answering a certain question. You may know that the Government sanctions Rs 2k Crore Fund for Scientific Research in Budget 2013.

He also told that the world economy was having quite a difficult phase, and it’s affecting the Indian economy too. He added that nobody is bothering about the global fiscal scenario, which is not right at all.

"There is no country in the world that I know is talking about a big bang. Please remember the Euro zone is in recession - Germany has contracted, UK has contracted in the last quarter... there is no big bang anywhere in the world," he concluded.

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