Disinvestment's tough climate call: The hurdle in govt's fund-raising path

A raft of energy and mineral CPSEs currently lined up for sale may find it difficult to attract buyers because they lack viable environment-related agendas

Among the many reasons for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with private equity and venture capital fund managers on Friday last week was to get a sense of how they read the government’s disinvestment plans.

At this stage, the disinvestment of BPCL, the Mumbai-based oil and gas producer, is likely to take place only in financial year 2022-23, although it was originally slated to be complete by this financial year. But this postponement raises the level of difficulty in terms of attracting investors for BPCL as well as other mineral and energy companies that the government plans to disinvest (see table).