India To Have Lower Budget Targets, For Disinvestment: Official

India would have to scale down its disinvestment target set in the Budget as the scope for minority stake sale in CPSEs has reduced and privatisation takes time to fructify, a finance ministry official said. "The focus has now shifted towards strategic sale and accordingly the disinvestment target has to be scaled down as privatisation is a time-taking process," the official told PTI.

The official further said in most of the major CPSEs, the government holding is just above 51 per cent, thus leaving very less scope for realisation of huge amounts from minority stake sales. "The disinvestment targets going ahead will have to keep in mind that," the official added. After missing the budgeted disinvestment target for three years, the government has set a lower realisation target from CPSE stake sale this fiscal. The budgeted target for this fiscal (2022-23) has been set at Rs 65,000 crore.

In the last fiscal (2021-22), the government had budgeted to raise Rs 1.75 lakh crore from CPSE disinvestment, which was revised lower to Rs 78,000 crore in the Revised Estimates. The actual realisation stood at Rs 13,531 crore last fiscal.

(PTI)