Govt to soon come out with a list of strategic sectors: DEA Secretary

In line with the 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan' package, Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj on Tuesday said the government will soon come out with a list of strategic sectors, and public sector companies in non-strategic sectors will be privatised.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in May announced that there will be a maximum of four public sector companies in strategic sectors, and state-owned firms in other segments will eventually be privatised.

"One important thing that I would like to mention is that the government should soon come out (with guidelines on) privatisation of the public sector companies," Bajaj said at India Idea Summit here.

"This is a major announcement. I would say after 1956 when we decided to have public sector enterprises as our showpieces, this is the first time that any government has said that we will not have companies in the non-strategic sector in the public sector and in the strategic sectors also we will have less number of companies," he said.

Bajaj also said the government will soon decide on privatisation of six Indian airports, including those in Amritsar, Indore, Ranchi, Trichy, Bhubaneswar and Raipur.

The government had started the process of privatisation of airports in November 2018, awarding three out of six airports to Adani Group, which had emerged as the highest bidder. These were airports of Ahmedabad, Mangalore and Lucknow.

With regard to bond market, Bajaj said efforts are on to deepen it and steps have been taken to include bonds in global indices by opening up full access to foreign investors in select government securities.

On economy, Bajaj said there are signs of green shoots emerging in economic growth in June and July.

"If you look at electricity generation, total assessable value of state wise e-way bills or for that matter PMI data, all point to strong recovery," he said.

Besides, he said, the government has put an emphasis on infrastructure development to push growth.

To augment infrastructure and create jobs in the country, a government task force has projected total investment of Rs 111 lakh crore in infra projects over five years as per the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) for 2019-2025.

"The asset monetisation in road, power, railways is also our priority and some efforts are on that side as well," he said.

He assured the investors that the government is committed to reforms even in these difficult times.

"While some reforms have already taken place, we are also committed to carrying these reforms further," he added.