• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi , Jan. 14

THE Centre's urgency to complete the disinvestment process in oil sector PSUs in the current fiscal prompted the Finance Ministry to convene an emergency meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) on Wednesday to clear proposals for foreign participation in the public issues of IBP Ltd, Gail India, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL).

According to the buzz in North Block corridors, the Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, personally intervened in the matter and asked the Finance Secretary, Mr D.C. Gupta, who also chairs the FIPB, to advance its meeting from Friday to Wednesday and approve the proposals.

These sell-off proposals had received the Cabinet's nod earlier.

The urgency to obtain the go-ahead from FIPB is also attributed to the fact that the Government is planning to hold a vote-on-account early next month followed by the Lok Sabha elections by the end of March. The disinvestment of the Government's equity in the four PSUs is expected to add about Rs 10,000 crore to revenue collections in this fiscal.

The hurried move, according to official sources, follows the Government's decision to complete the sell-off exercise before the middle of March for which the Ministry of Disinvestment had requested the Finance Ministry, the administrative Ministry for the FIPB, to arrange the board's clearance before the middle of January.

FIPB permission is required to enable non-resident investors, including foreign institutional investors (FIIs), non-resident Indians (NRIs), SEBI-registered foreign venture capital investors as also multilateral and bilateral development financial institutions — who are also classified as Qualified Institutional Buyers by SEBI — to participate in the public offers of these four energy companies.

In a communication dated January 8, 2004, the Disinvestment Ministry had told the Finance Ministry that "in order to complete the transactions before mid-March 2004, offer documents are to be filed before SEBI by the middle of this month.

Hence, it is essential that the approval of FIPB on the proposal is available within one week," and further went on to add that "kindly arrange to obtain the approval of FIPB for transfer of equity shares by GoI."

In all, the Centre is disinvesting its equity to the extent of 26 per cent in IBP, 28.9 per cent in IPCL and 10 per cent each in ONGC and Gail.

More Stories on : Petroleum | Disinvestment | Policy

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Foreign participation in oil PSUs sell-off cleared — Decision taken at emergency meeting

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line