Betting on a healthy investor response to the current CPSE exchange-traded fund, the Centre is confident of reaching its revised disinvestment target of ₹16,000 crore for the current fiscal after the new fund offer closes on Friday.
The Government had originally planned to raise ₹30,000 crore through disinvestments this fiscal, but after some of the disinvestment plans did not take off, it pruned the target to ₹16,000 crore.
The Government is currently raising ₹3,000 crore through the CPSE ETF, which opened for anchor investors on Tuesday and non-anchor investors on Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management India, which is managing the issue, said the response to the new fund offer so far had been good. “We have received bids for about ₹1,800 crore, including ₹850 crore from anchor investors on the first day,” Vijesh Gonsalves, Executive Director, told media persons here on Thursday.
The ETF, which will get listed on the exchanges on April 11 and can be traded like any stock, consists of a basket of 10 blue-chip public sector enterprises, including ONGC, Coal India Ltd, Oil India Ltd, IOCL, Power Finance Corporation and Container Corporation of India.
Sangita Choure, Joint Secretary, Department of Disinvestment, said this was the first time the Government was tapping the ETF route for disinvestment. “We had two follow-on public offers, one buy-back offer (NHPC) and six offers-for-sale as part of our disinvestment programme this year,” she told media persons on Thursday.
She admitted that offers-for-sale was a much easier and quicker route for disinvestment.