Jaitley did not say if it will be an outright sale or partial divestment.
Close on the heels of Disinvestment Commission recommending privatisation of National Buildings Construction Corp, Disinvestment Department has asked Ministry of Urban Development for its comments in the matter, by January 31.
The guidelines for strategic disinvestment were issued on Monday itself when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget for 2016-17.
Tata Sons has emerged as the top bidder for the takeover of debt-laden State-run airline Air India but the bid is yet to be approved by a group of ministers headed by Home Minister Amit Shah, sources said.
Former RBI governor D Subbarao has suggested that the government should come up with a 10-year road map for privatisation of all Public Sector Banks (PSBs) as it would provide much needed predictability to stakeholders. Subbarao further said that the big bang approach to privatisation of state-owned banks is not desirable but at the same time the issue should not be put on the back burner. "Ideally, we should have a road map, maybe over a 10 year timeframe, to privatise all PSBs. "That will give much needed predictability to all stakeholders," he told PTI.
In a first, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met the secretaries of all the government departments collectively and asked them to directly get in touch with him to resolve issues and expedite decision-making.
The idea is to do away with the need for the approval of the Core Group of Secretaries on Divestment for privatisation of companies, especially in non-strategic sectors.
According to officials, more clarity might be required with regard to foreign fund managers in the context of Air India divestment.
For next fiscal, the minority stake sale target has been kept at Rs 36,000 crore.
Government has targeted to garner about Rs 56,500 crore through selling its stake in PSUs.
The Centre's push to sell Air India on priority has led to delays in other strategic divestment proposals, such as privatising United India Insurance, as well as ongoing transactions, such as Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), revealed multiple officials involved in the process. The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) is yet to take new privatisation recommendations of the NITI Aayog to the core group of secretaries on disinvestment (CGD) headed by the Cabinet secretary, said one of the officials. The priority now is to ensure all approvals for Air India are in place since the government intends to hand over the national carrier as early as this month.
Doubts over implementation of a Cabinet-approved strategic sale policy are puzzling.
Govt bosses in no hurry to exit from PSUs; many agencies, long process likely hurdles.
The government on Monday signed the share purchase agreement with Tata Sons for the sale of national carrier Air India for Rs 18,000 crore. Earlier this month, the government had accepted an offer by Talace Pvt Ltd, a unit of the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate, to pay Rs 2,700 crore cash and take over Rs 15,300 crore of the airline's debt. Following that, on October 11 a Letter of Intenet (LoI) was issued to the Tata Group confirming the government's willingness to sell its 100 per cent stake in the airline.
Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's belated attempt to project himself as a statesman and a man of reason in his interviews to ANI and TV9 is being viewed with dollops of scepticism by his critics and political opponents. Anita Katyal reports.
On the first anniversary of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government, Sangh Parivar affiliates say they are annoyed with the ruling dispensation but can't live without it either
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