The Hindu Business Line : Punjab tourism properties for sale

These are the Amritsar International Hotel, Amritsar, Queen's Flower Tourist Complex, at Neelon district, Ludhiana, the tourist complex at Wagha border and the Holiday Home scheme with properties at several tourist destinations across the country.

The Government has appointed Karvy Investor Services Ltd (KISL), the Hyderabad-based firm, as its global advisor for the proposed disinvestment of these and other properties owned by PTDC, which is a 100 per cent State Government-owned enterprise.

The Directorate of Disinvestment of the Punjab Government has also called for expression of interest (EoI) with April 7 as the deadline for strategic sale of the four businesses. "Though PTDC has 25 properties, we decided to take the route of offering them in `tranches' of four and make the effort a focussed and result-oriented one," said Mr P.B. Ramanujam, Vice-President, Corporate Finance and Merchant Banking of KISL.

The Punjab Government intends to divest all the businesses of PTDC, which was formed in 1979 and is loss making, along with assets/liabilities, through sale of businesses as a going concern. It has set up a core group of Secretaries, with the Chief Secretary as the Chairman to oversee the process, Mr Ramanujam told Business Line here.

The key factors that are expected to make the properties attractive to strategic investors are the sale through transfer of equity in the resultant company through demerger in demat form, which brings tax advantages, flexibility to affect changes in the acquired property or create new facilities, and there would be no stamp duty, he explained.

While the Amritsar International is a 3-star hotel close to the Golden Temple, the Holiday Home scheme has properties spread in Goa, Manali, Mussorie and Jaipur among others. Similarly, the tourist complex at Wagha also has an entertainment centre while the Queen's Tourist Flower complex at Neelon has nearly seven-and-half acres of land for development.

The Punjab Government is perhaps among the very few States to have a separate Directorate of Disinvestment. It has also identified four State enterprises— the PTDC, Punjab Tractors, Punjab Alkali, Punjab Communications and Punjab Container Warehouse Corporation for fast tract disinvestments.

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