Mines Minister B K Handique today said the follow-on public offer (FPO) of state-run Hindustan Copper (HCL) would hit the market at an appropriate time.
"We will definitely, at the best of time, go for it," the minister told reporters after a meeting of with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Alhuwalia here.
Home Minister P Chaidambaram was also present at the meeting among others.
Sources in the mines ministry, however, said the government would like to wait and watch on the market development and was in no hurry to come out with the FPO and as such, this could happen in early next fiscal.
Earlier during the day, Disinvestment Secretary Sumit Bose indicated that HCL FPO might come this fiscal.
The Cabinet had in June last year approved disinvestment of 10 per cent paid-up equity capital out of the government's shareholding in HCL along with issue of fresh equity of equal size by the company.
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Accordingly, in July the Copper miner had appointed UBS Securities, ICICI Securities, SBI Capital, Kotak Mahindra and Enam Securities as the managers of the issue and filed the draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in September.
The 20 per cent share sale programme, aimed at garnering about Rs 4,000 crore, was slated to begin on December 6 and close on December 9. However, it reportedly deferred the public offer anticipating lukewarm participation from foreign institutional investors.
HCL would use the proceeds to ramp up its production to 12 million tonne per annum (mtpa) by 2017 from 3.15 mtpa now.
HCL's 0.41 per cent stake is already with the public. The proposed FPO would see the government holding coming down to 81.44 per cent from the present 99.59 per cent.