)
Government has approved the sale of its residual stakes in Hindustan Zinc Ltd and Bharat Aluminium Co (BALCO), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.
The government owns 29.5% of Hindustan Zinc and 49% of BALCO. Both the companies are majority owned by London-listed Vedanta Resources Plc. In October, mining conglomerate Vedanta won the backing of its shareholders to offer up to $3.48 billion to buy the government's stakes in the companies.
Jaitley also said it will publicly list steel company Rashtriya Ispat Nigam and sell a 10% stake in the entity this fiscal year ending March.
The government is also planning to sell a 5% stake in state-run Steel Authority of India and a 10% stake in Hindustan Aeronautics this fiscal year to shore up its finances, Jaitley added.
The Finance Minister said that he was preparing to take a final decision on GAAR, which was deferred by two years.
Introduced in 2012, the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR), were aimed at companies routing money through tax havens such as Mauritius, but implementation was delayed after an uproar from investors who feared harassment from tax authorities.
