Finance Ministry plans an ETF to achieve disinvestment target in this fiscal

09 Jul 2012 Evaluate

In a bid to achieve the disinvestment target of Rs 30,000 crore in FY13, the Finance Ministry is planning to set up exchange traded fund (ETF) for selling shares of public sectors undertakings (PSUs). The ETF will be launched in the format of Hong Kong Tracker Fund, in this regard, Disinvestment Department has floated a concept note for implementing it.

The government will make a bunch of shares of the state-owned companies in which it wants to divest stake and create a fund (ETF), which would be listed on stock exchanges. The ETF, which is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges much like stocks, would have an underlying benchmark which could be an index on the stock exchange. The government has already planned to divest stake in companies like Hindustan Copper, Oil India, SAIL, BHEL, HAL and RINL this fiscal.

Meanwhile, the government has started the process of divesting stake in PSUs in this fiscal and likely to come out with a public offer of RINL and Hindustan Copper by the end of this quarter. In last fiscal, the government had managed to mop-up only about Rs 14,000 crore through disinvestment as against a target of Rs 40,000 crore.

Earlier in January this year, the government had introduced offer for sale (OFS) and Institutional Placement Programme (IPP) model to attain Rs 30,000 crore target. IPP and OFS are two new share sale tools launched by the regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to assist corporates in hiking their public shareholding. These two models will also help companies achieving the minimum 25 percent public holding guideline by June, 2013.

There are about 13 PSUs which have to meet the minimum public holding guidelines by August, 2013 while, all the listed companies are required to have at least 25 percent public holding by June, 2013.

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