For the first time, heads of 25 public sector units will interact with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Private sector honchos have occasionally had an audience with the Prime Minister, but Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs) have never had such meetings.
The list of invitees for Tuesday’s meeting includes chairmen of SAIL, ONGC, Coal India, NTPC, Indian Oil, and BHEL.
A senior Government official told
The meeting has been convened at the request of Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel, who also holds charge of the Department of Public Enterprises.
According to Patel, like private sector CEOs, public sector chiefs feel that they should also get an opportunity to meet the Prime Minister and other top government officials to resolve issues.
One of the key issues to figure at Tuesday’s meeting is greater financial autonomy for state-owned firms. The Ministry for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises claims that its constant “endeavour” was to give state-owned firms more financial autonomy.
“They have certain caps on spending and investment. We would like to see that it is further expanded and liberalised so that they are able to operate more freely in an ever-changing world,” Patel had said. CPSUs have been accorded Maharatna, Navratna and Miniratna (two categories) for the purpose of financial autonomy. There are five Maharatnas, 16 Navratnas and 68 Miniratnas. A Maharatna company’s board need not seek government permission for investments up to Rs 5,000 crore in a joint venture project or a wholly-owned subsidiary. For a Navratna CPSU, this limit is Rs 1,000 crore.
Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, has already held a meeting with top nine CPSUs on September 9, on the matter and asked these companies to invest more. The nine CPSUs alone have nearly Rs 1.80-lakh crore as cash reserves.