BackIndia divestment czar sees new ways to free cash at state firms
Modi needs all the help he can to narrow Asia's widest fiscal deficit without cutting stimulus spending that's sustaining one of the world's fastest growth rates
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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy shake up offers unprecedented flexibility to use idle cash at state companies and help meet India’s record asset sale target, said the man responsible to achieve the goal.
Neeraj Kumar Gupta’s department, which would earlier concentrate only on asset sales, will now consider several other options to raise revenue, he said in an interview in New Delhi on Thursday. These include capital restructuring, bonus and dividend payouts, and reinvestments as part of a new umbrella policy for public asset management.
“The process will involve multiple actors," Gupta said. “So coordinating with each of them and keeping them aligned to a timeline is the biggest challenge."
Modi needs all the help he can to narrow Asia’s widest fiscal deficit without cutting stimulus spending that’s sustaining one of the world’s fastest growth rates. Failure to meet budget targets risks stoking inflation, boosting borrowing costs and imperiling the nation’s credit ratings.
Modi’s looking to narrow the deficit to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the year starting 1 April mainly by boosting tax revenues by 12%. Some analysts such as Dhananjay Sinha at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd. are already calling this optimistic, as the benefit from lower oil prices -- which allowed him to painlessly raise tariffs on gasoline -- fades away.
So the Rs56,500 crore he’s targeting from sales of stakes in state companies becomes even more crucial. This includes Rs20,500 crore from sales of majority stakes, even though previous attempts have been hindered by labour union protests and volatile financial markets.
About Rs36,000 crore is being sought from the sale of minority stakes in companies such as Coal India Ltd. and Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which seems ambitious considering India’s highest ever annual collection since 1992 has been Rs24,300 crore. That happened in a year when the benchmark stock index rallied 25%; equities have plunged 17% over the past 12 months.
“Market volatility definitely offers a challenge but we will make our best endeavor to meet the target," Gupta said. “The government is not selling under pressure."
‘All options’
Learning from experience, India is considering various options, including buybacks, private placements and giving up management control in some state companies. Modi’s policy advisory body NITI Aayog, headed by former Asian Development Bank chief economist Arvind Panagariya, will identify the companies for strategic sale.
“We have to leverage the assets of central public sector enterprises for generation of resources for investment in new projects," finance minister Arun Jaitley said in the budget speech on 29 February. These include sale of land and factories, he said.
Gupta, who added Rs5,800 crore to the government’s stake sale kitty within two months of taking charge in January, said regulators and company law allow various instruments for divestment.
“We will use all possible options most transparently and most efficiently," he said. Bloomberg
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