Govt’s Mega Privatization Push: PSUs In Insurance, Oil & Gas, Banking, Mines Will Be Sold To Private Firms!

Privatisation has become a very common term used in the past couple of months.

With news of privatisation of PSU Indian firms, there have been a lot of false and maybe tweaked facts about the reality of what’s going on.

So today, we are here to give you, in a very brief period of time, a good insight into the mega privatisation drive and what names can you expect to hear shortly, either being privatised or sold majority stocks of, the works of which are still in progress.

Privatisation Drive to Start Soon?

With news of privatisation surfacing from every corner, we might as well fill you in about the most recent details regarding the drive.

While the Centre plans to hold majority stakes in some big shot companies like Stake Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, other recently merged banks, LIC, GIC, Powergrid and ONGC, it is planning to propose selling other government-owned companies.

As per the government, the privatisation drive will bring in a multitude of investment opportunities for investors looking to enter different untapped sectors like:

• enter oil and gas
• banking
• fertiliser
• power
• mines
• minerals and
• insurance sectors.

These private players can finally unanimously enter these sectors by buying a stake in public sector companies.

How will all the PSUs Water Down?

The government has since some time now, expressed its interest in either merging or playing out a number of public sector companies in every sector to quite a few.

For example, sectors like Oil & Gas, Power, Fertilizer, Coal, Mines & Minerals, Banks and Insurance, have number of players in them.

The government plans to now bring the number of companies and organizations in each sector to quite a handful count.

The government is looking to not have more than 1-4 companies in each of the strategic sectors.

For instance, in the Oil & Gas sector, the Centre plans to only hold majority stakes for ONGC and GAIL.

In fact, even these 2 PSUs will be nudged to sell their stakes in downstream investments. This could mean ONGC could consider selling its stake in HPCL or GSPC. 

Other Sectors

As a matter of fact, not just the Oil and Gas sector, even for sectors like insurance, the government plans to let only 2 such companies, namely LIC and GIC stand.

Monetisation of assets to utilize the funds generated from here to create new infrastructure, is another one of such plans that is currently being worked upon by the government.

It could auction mineral and coal mines, while opening more airports to be run by private players and also giving completed roads on long term leases.

Besides this, the government also plans to sell at least 4-5 fertiliser companies. Department of Investment and Public Asset Management has currently sought comments on its draft policy from 40 government departments and will finalise a note on the policy soon.

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