Disinvestment delayed: Nalco bidders told to cool their heels

While the visiting officials had police protection, this didn’t help as the police didn’t stop the protesters from smashing a laptop belonging to the team, or from deflating their car tyres.

Despite the fact that it has been 10 days since the attack, no one in the government has pulled up Chief Minister Patnaik for the episode, nor got any assurance from him that the incident would not recur.

After this episode, none of the other 13 interested parties has been allowed to conduct their due diligence of the Nalco facilities — only after the due diligence is done, can any of the bidders actually make a bid for the aluminium major.

Sources say the government is unlikely to take any decision on Nalco separately for the moment, but the issue of disinvestment is likely to be discussed threadbare at the meeting of the NDA allies next week, prior to the parliament session.

As against this year’s privatisation target of Rs 12,000, the total realised so far is a mere Rs 3,500 cr. Interestingly, the tenth five year plan that was recently cleared by the Union Cabinet, has assumed an annual privatisation target of Rs 16,000 every year for the period 2002 to 2007.

How this is to be achieved, however, is unclear since the government has not been able to get any consensus on selling off the big PSUs.

Sales of oil majors HPCL and BPCL is in a limbo with Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani siding with Petroleum Minister Ram Naik and scuttling the sale; and telecom minister Pramod Mahajan has been talking of merging MTNL and BSNL in order to ensure MTNL does not get sold — merging the two will dramatically lower MTNL’s profitability and valuation.

The bidders for Nalco include Indian aluminium giants Sterlite and Hindalco along with international majors like Glencore of Switzerland, Russian Aluminium, Pechiney of France, Alcoa, Alcan and the BHP.