BackIndia to miss its revised disinvestment target this year amid Russia-Ukraine crisis
India's disinvestment proceeds to fall short of revised estimates for second time since 2014
PremiumIndia will miss its revised disinvestment target for the second time in the past eight years by a wide margin, as the government may not be able to raise an expected over ₹60,000 crore from the IPO of insurance behemoth LIC in 2021-22.
Since the Modi government came to power in 2014, it was only in the financial year 2019-20 that it failed to achieve the revised CPSE disinvestment target of ₹65,000 crore. The mop-up during the year was only ₹50,304 crore.
In the ongoing financial year 2021-22, the government was all set to go ahead with the share sale of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) this month and draft papers for the same were also filed with markets regulator Sebi.
However, the Russia-Ukraine war has severely impacted the stock markets forcing the government to rethink about the timing of the IPO.
If the IPO fails to hit the market by March 31, the government will stare at a huge shortfall in the disinvestment mop-up. So far, the government has collected ₹12,400 crore and was banking on LIC IPO to achieve the revised target of ₹78,000 crore.
But for the financial year 2019-20, the government has invariably exceeded the Revised Estimates of the disinvestment proceeds.
In 2015-16, the actual mop-up was ₹42,132 crore as against RE of ₹25,313 crore. Similarly, in the financial year 2017-18, the government had set a record of sorts by raising over ₹1 lakh crore, which was nearly the same as was mentioned in the RE.
As regard the current financial year, the government has raised ₹12,434 crore so far, including ₹2,700 crore from Air India sale and ₹3,994 crore from sale of SUUTI stake in Axis Bank.
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