The Department of Disinvestment has invited bids from merchant bankers for divesting the Government stake further in petroleum exploring company OIL India.

The Government has decided to disinvest 10 per cent paid-up equity of OIL India through Offer for Sale (OFS) of shares through the stock exchanges, DoD said in an advertisement.

The last date for submitting expressions of interest (EoIs) by merchant bankers and selling brokers is October 4.

The Government holds 78.43 per cent stake in the company and would come down to 68.43 per cent, post-disinvestment.

OIL’s paid-up capital as on March 2012 was Rs 601 crore.

The role of the merchant bankers would be to assist and advise the Government on the modalities of the offer for sale and also conduct market surveys for pricing the offer.

Last week, the Government decided to sell its stake in four PSUs — Hindustan Copper, Oil India, MMTC and Nalco — which may fetch around Rs 15,000 crore.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) cleared the proposal for 12.15 per cent stake sale of Nalco and 9.33 per cent in MMTC through the Offer for Sale (OFS) route, besides, 9.59 per cent disinvestment in Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL).

The Government has proposed to raise Rs 30,000 crore from disinvestment in the current fiscal. However, it has failed to come out with any public offering in first five months of 2012-13.

Last fiscal, due to volatile market conditions, the Government had to postpone the sell-off process in some PSUs.

It raised only Rs 14,000 crore in 2011-12 against a target of Rs 40,000 crore.

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