Divestment of THDCIL & NEEPCO, land sales may fetch govt Rs 30,000 crore

Sale of stake in THDC India Ltd and NEEPCO would help the Centre in compensating the likely shortfall on spectrum-related payments that were budgeted for this year, sources said. The government last week deferred spectrum related payments by two years to provide relief to telecom companies. In the 2019-20 Budget Estimates, the government has pegged receipts from other communication services at Rs 50,519.81 crore, up from Rs 39,245 crore in 2018-19, as per Budget documents. Other communication services mainly account for license fees from telecom operators and receipts on account of spectrum usage charges.

Sources said the Finance Ministry is speeding up the process to sell identified land parcels held by government departments and companies across the country. The government has already hired 11 consultancy firms for the process: RITES Ltd, JLL Property Consultants (India), KPMG Advisory Services, CBRE South Asia Private Ltd and Boston Consulting Group, among others.

Stake sale in five state-owned companies could help government raise about Rs 1 lakh crore. In the Budget for the current year, the government has set a disinvestment receipt target of Rs 1,05,000 crore, as against Rs 80,000 crore in 2018-19. Last Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved plans to privatise three big PSUs — downstream oil major BPCL (excluding Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Ltd), cargo mover Container Corporation of India Ltd (CONCOR) and Shipping Corporation of India Ltd (SCI) — through strategic sale and transfer of management control.

It also gave a go ahead to offload its entire stake in power companies THDC India Ltd (74.23 per cent) and NEEPCO (100 per cent) and transfer management control to state-owned power producer NTPC Ltd. In BPCL, the government will sell its 53.29 per cent holding and in SCI, the stake sale will be 63.75 per cent. In CONCOR, the government will sell 30.8 per cent out of its total stake of 54.8 per cent. The Centre wants to retain 24 per cent stake in CONCOR given its importance in the railway sector, but will transfer the management control.