The government hopes that IDBI Bank will receive financial bids by the end of this financial year.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Tuhin Kant Pandey, Secretary of the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), said, “In early August, we will be moving to the due diligence process of IDBI Bank and move forward. We hope to get the financial bids in this financial year.”
Shedding light on the government strategic disinvestment plan of public banks, Pandey explained that strategic disinvestment is a time-consuming process because management control must be shifted to strategic buyers.
Pandey said, “We have to do it through a two-stage bidding process, wherein the first stage we bring Expression of Interest (EOI) and thereafter they are taken to due diligence. You have to negotiate the share purchase agreements, and then go for financial bidding. Before that, there could be an issue of real estate embedded core in non-core assets to be separated, which may also involve demergers.”
He added, “It may also involve taking specific regulatory approvals and addressing issues related to employees, their post-retirement benefits, and other things, which need to be securitized in the form of trusts, etc. All these things need to be addressed, and after that, we will proceed with the transactions to their logical culmination.”
Talking about the strategic disinvestment of the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), Pandey noted that there is a lot of documentation required from the Government of Maharashtra to change the lease name from SCI to SCI LAL, and there are some employee trust issues to resolve. Once these issues are sorted, the process can move forward to financial bidding.
On the disinvestment of PSU banks, Pandey stated that the Department of Financial Services could provide more details, but he mentioned that it is not being pursued currently because there is no legislation in place for it, which requires a legislative change.
Highlighting the government’s broader public asset management strategy, Pandey said, “The government is very keen on following a broader integrated public asset management strategy, which focuses on value creation for public enterprises. Disinvestment is actually subsumed into this strategy. So, disinvestment per se is not a target with a specific budget goal, but wherever opportunities arise in the context of the value creation strategy, disinvestment will also be pursued.”
Responding to a question on the government’s focus on dividends, Pandey emphasized that the aim is not to maximize dividends but to ensure consistent dividends.
“The difference is that the enterprises should always have resources for bringing in their internal equity for growth,” he concluded.
