‘Coal India has huge potential if government stops abusing it’

A few positives came out as they agreed that Coal India (CIL) is free to set coal prices and committed to coal washing,but that is not enough. We need public commitment.

The ministry did not indicate how they were going to compensate us for the damages caused by interfering in coal prices earlier. We will pursue this through the courts as we have a very strong legal case.

What is the compensation you are asking for? What are your other demands?

I can’t comment on that but it would be in few hundreds of millions of dollars. We want two things — one to make a public commitment as to by when they are going to price all coal through markets and other is commitment on coal washing.

Why is a public commitment necessary?

When we spoke to the new chairman S Narsing Rao,he said that he was just following instructions from the government and the government says that the company is free to do what they want,so no one wants to move.

Also,we want them to commit publicly on washing the coal and he said that he would only make the public commitment if the government asks him to do so and the government says that the company should decide on its own.

So,we are going in circles and everyone is hiding behind each other and we don’t think it is very constructive.

Is going to court the only solution?

We prefer to do it in a firendly fashion but I have to protect my investors money and perform my fiduciary duty. Given the fact that we are very serious about our investment and there is huge potential in CIL,we will proceed.

Do you regret your investment in CIL?

We still think that this is the best investment in India but we would like to see an acceleration in positive actions and we need the co-operation of government rather than abusing this incredibly powerful company with huge profit potential. The Q4 results are very good and the company is making some progress in terms of pricing but we think its too slow.

Would you consider investing in other PSUs?

Not until we have resolved this matter. Possibly this would be very positive for India as if we can resolve this matter it would be positive for other PSUs because other investors will pick up on this.

It will be acccepted that minority shareholdres are no longer abused and that is one of the reasons for lack of foreign investor interest to invest in PSUs.

We told them that you can’t look at this case in isolation,this is in effect in all PSUs and you treat this with care as this will have implications across the spectrum.

The government intervention in PSUs is affecting foreign investments.