At a pre-Budget meeting, the FM was asked to ensure that NBFCs come out of the liquidity crisis they are facing with the help of RBI. They also spoke about the futility of trying to achieve a 3 per cent fiscal deficit target over the medium term.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
"The strategic divestment transaction of Air India successfully concluded today with transfer of 100 per cent shares of Air India to M/s Talace Pvt Ltd along with management control," DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said in a tweet. A new board, led by the strategic partner, takes charge of Air India, he added.
'The business continuity clause will mean the Tatas will have to keep running the airline for three years, and cannot exit the flying business.'
The Tata group may have to deploy upwards of $1 billion to improve the airline's passenger reservation system, upgrade and refurbish Air India's fleet, primarily the wide-body aircraft which are the mainstay for the airline's international operations, people in the know said. While the group has not yet decided on how it intends to integrate Air India with its existing airlines AirAsia India and Vistara, sources said the first task will be to refinance Air India's existing loans, upgrade its aircraft gradually, and rewrite multiple business contracts with vendors and suppliers. "They will have to do 100 things to stabilise the airline and will have to put in a lot of money," DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said, confirming that many aircraft are grounded.
The Vedanta group on Wednesday confirmed putting in a preliminary expression of interest (EoI) for buying the government's stake in Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL).
The government is selling its entire 100 per cent stake in Air India but wants effective control to stay with Indian nationals.
After the government sought Parliament's nod for a second batch of supplementary demand for grants that will cause a hit of Rs 2.99 trillion to the exchequer, doubts suddenly arose about the government's ability to meet the Budget projections of reining in its fiscal deficit at 6.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), or Rs 15.06 trillion, for the current financial year. Till now, many were of the opinion that the government would succeed in checking the deficit at a much lower figure than what was given in the Budget Estimates (BE). The government had sought Parliament's approval to spend Rs 3.74 trillion extra, but Rs 74,517.01 crore will be matched by equal savings on other heads.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Budget a little more than a month from now. Like any other FM, Sitharaman will depend on her team of bureaucrats and advisors to frame and present the Budget.
India is the fifth worst-hit nation by the COVID-19 pandemic after the United States, Brazil, Russia and the United Kingdom, according to the Johns Hopkins University data.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances