Govt pulled up for no policy paper on disinvestment

Charging the government with adopting a casual approach on disinvestment, a Parliament Standing Committee has asked the Centre to come forwa...

Charging the government with adopting a casual approach on disinvestment, a Parliament Standing Committee has asked the Centre to come forward with a comprehensive policy document on disinvestment policy.

‘The committee is rather perturbed by government’s casual approach towards the committee’s repeated recommendations to bring out a comprehensive document on disinvestment policy which could be laid before Parliament for its approval’, it said.

‘The committee once again desires that the government should take note of their recommendation seriously’, the report of the standing committee on finance, headed by N. Janardhana Reddy, and tabled in Parliament recently, said. It said policy makers, be it in the administrative ministries or in the State governments, occasionally face a dilemma. ‘They are often convinced about the merits of privatisation, but do not know how to implement it’.

The enormous outpouring of literature on privatisation, the dramatic success of privatisation in a number of diverse countries and the economic realities of excessive burden of over-stretched public sector in their States have convinced them to try privatisation. ‘Yet to most of them the process of implementing privatisation is often shrouded in mystery. This fear of the unknown often discourages them from taking the first step’.