It’s not a crime to save government from a crisis or embarrassment.
LIC did exactly the same for a very lengthy period. The question to be asked here
is, whether it’s right to use LIC to escape from every embarrassment of
otherwise failed disinvestment drives.
Look at the data; over 60% of last NTPC stake sale was subscribed
by LIC. After this LIC’s stake in NTPC was increased by 3.9% to 12.98%. Same
thing happened with previous stake sales as well - IDBI, IOC etc. List is long.
LIC holds 21.22% share in Corporation Bank, 16.8% in MTNL, 14.36 in UCO Bank,
14.31% in BHEL, 14.13% in Shipping Corporation; 13.75% in Canara Bank so on and
so forth.
Is this disinvestment? Government is selling shares of PSUs and
another arm (read LIC) is buying most of it. How long we can live in this false
perception that disinvestment is a success? This has to be changed.
This year, LIC invested 53,000 crore rupees for equity
purchases compared to last year’s 39,000 crore. In 2014–15 LIC booked an all-time
high profit of 24,000 Crore. I really don’t know what is happening here. If equity
purchases of PSUs are so profitable then why others are not doing it in such a
great scale. Can anyone enlighten me?
Sajeev
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