SME Times News Bureau | 19 Jan, 2019
The disinvestment
target of Rs 80,000 crore set by it is unlikely to be met by the Centre, said Care
Ratings said on Friday.
The
fiscal deficit will come in at 3.5 per cent as against the targeted 3.3 per
cent, signifying a slippage of around Rs 20,000 crore, Care Ratings added.
"In this fiscal year, meeting the disinvestment target of Rs 80,000 crore
will be challenging given the volatile conditions in the financial markets. We
expect that disinvestment proceeds could be around Rs 60,000 crore for
FY19," said the report titled 'Disinvestments in CPSEs - Hits and misses.'
"The disinvestment proceeds have fallen short of the targeted
disinvestment by the Central government for the past five years, except in
FY18. On an average, the government has achieved nearly 65 per cent of the
budgeted disinvestment during FY14-FY17. In FY14, the disinvestment proceeds
were merely 53 per cent of the budgeted target, lowest in all the years,"
it said.
In the last fiscal, total disinvestment proceeds came in at Rs 1 lakh crore,
exceeding the budgeted target of Rs 72,500 crore, the report added.
It also said that with a little over two months to go for the fiscal year-end,
the government had raised Rs 32,142 crore, or 43 per cent of the target by
December.
Of this, Rs 25,325 crore has been raised through the Central Public Sector
Enterprises Exchange Traded Fund (CPSE-ETF) the mechanism allowing the
simultaneous sale of government stake in various CPSEs across diverse sectors
through a single offer.
Among the various divestment routes, the offer-for-sale comes second in
realisations with Rs 5,218 crore, followed by over Rs 1,500 crore raised
through share buybacks.
To make up the shortfall, the government has decided to come up with another
tranche of ETF with the Bharat 22 ETF offer and can raise about Rs 14,000 crore
by selling 52.63 per cent stake in Rural Electrification Corp, the report said.
It can attempt to raise another Rs 12,000 crore through share buybacks of
state-run units in a context limited by the volatility in the markets, it
added.