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Anil Agarwal, chairman of Vedanta Group believes that the Indian government can earn more money through divestment of equity shares and incremental profit if they choose to corporatise its companies instead of privatising them. Agarwal was talking at the Times Group's India Economic Conclave on Thursday.
Agarwal said that why shouldn't the government at least stop privatising its listed companies instead corporatise them? By corporatising the 200-odd listed central PSUs, it can earn much more at one go and then keep on earning more in annual profits, as reported by the PTI.
He further explained that this has happened in many countries and we can also follow suit. He cited the example of the share sale in some of its key assets -- Hindustan Zinc and Nalco being the best cases -- to his own group.
"Our fund houses have enough money to absorb such large share sales," Agarwal added.
Further, Agarwal also said that this can deflect criticism that the government is selling out apart from blunting workers' unions' opposition to privatisation, fearing job losses as a portion of the shares being sold can be given to employees as stock options and such companies can be run by professional boards like L&T or the HDFC group.
While addressing the conclave, Agarwal also wondered if " some of the world's most successful and largest companies can be run by Indians or Indian origin men and women, why can't the government allow its own people to run its companies more efficiently."
The government failed to mop up the budgeted privatisation targets and the worst shortfall was in FY22. It could only end up getting not even a fourth of the budgeted estimates of ₹1.75 lakh crore for FY22 - as they failed to get their largest divestment plan - LIC listed through an IPO.
For financial year FY23, the government has set a divestment target of ₹65,000 crore - higher from the ₹13,531 crore mopped up last fiscal.
