Last month, the Union Cabinet gave its approval for the privatisation of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, a profitable Maharatna public sector company that does oil refining and marketing. BPCL is one of several PSUs in which the government is looking to sell its stakes.
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This large-scale disinvestment — the BPCL stake alone is expected to raise around ₹60,000 crore for the Exchequer this year — will certainly ease the fiscal pressures being faced by the country. But what are the larger objectives of this move? Is it about raising revenues, or improving efficiencies, or broadening the capital market?
In this podcast, Professor T.T. Rammohan (Finance and Economics, IIM, Ahmedabad), who has served on several advisory panels for the RBI and SEBI, and Professor C.P. Chandrasekhar (retired faculty from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, JNU) discuss the implications of the BPCL stake sale and what it augurs for the future of India’s disinvestment policy.
