SCI sale delayed by 2 months

It’s not just the big ones like HPCL and BPCL whose sales have been put off, schedules for almost all privatisations this year are way behind. According to Disinvestment Secretary Pradip Baijal, Shipping Corporation of India was to be sold off by October, but this will now be extended till December. Balmer Lawrie was to be sold off by this month, but the process is now expected to take till January next year—even the Information Memoranda has not been issued so far.

Three fertiliser companies —National Fertilisers, Madras Fertilisers and FACT—will, of course, be sold now only after the new fertiliser policy is announced, a process which could take even more than six months.

Says Baijal, ‘we are trying to complete privatisation as per schedule but after political protests over two-three entities, it has become difficult even for the existing companies’. ‘Unless I have companies, I can’t go forward with disinvestment process’.

In the case of Nalco, though the CCD has cleared it, ‘it has slowed down for reasons well known to all of us’, says Bajijal. If the government is able to sell Nalco, Baijal says they’ll be able to touch a total sale of Rs 5,000 crore. That’s against a target of Rs 12,000 crore.