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The Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises will be putting before the Cabinet a proposal to ease certain norms for conferring Maharatna status on PSUs within a month, in a move that would see PSUs such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) and GAIL get elevated to this status.
“We expect to have the new norms in place by June this year. This will help some PSUs gain more flexibility in planning capital expenditure programmes and going in for overseas acquisitions,” Mr Praful Patel, Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, told presspersons here on Friday.
He said BHEL would be “first of the blocks” once the revised norms were approved. “A company like BHEL, which has an order book of Rs 1,75,000 crore, does not get the advantage of cyclical price increases like IOC as it is in the manufacturing sector. This should justify BHEL's upgradation as a Maharatna,” he said.
In response to a question, the Minister said he did not expect any opposition to such a proposal from other ministries or departments. “I do not think there should be any opposition. The objective (of the proposal) is only to strengthen the PSUs by making the process of decision-making more flexible. It is not as ifthere will be any change in administrative control,” he said.
There are five Maharatna companies, including ONGC, SAIL, NTPC and Coal India Ltd.
On the question of cheaper imports of power plant-related components hitting PSUs such as BHEL, Mr Patel said the Ministry would take up with the Finance and Power Ministries the issue of restricting some of these imports in the current Plan period. “In the Eleventh Plan period, there was need for such imports due to a shortfall in capacity. But today, such indiscriminate imports may not be necessary. Take BHEL, for instance, — its capacity is set to increase from about 13,000 MW to 20,000 MW next year,” he said.
On sick PSUs, Mr Patel said the Ministry would put before the Cabinet a proposal to sell seven to eight sick PSUs including Scooters India and HMT bearings. “The process could begin this year. There is no point in the Government supporting such terminally-ill, non-operational units,” he said.
Mr Patel said the Ministry was also working on new guidelines for the appointment of independent directors on PSU boards
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