New Delhi: The Government will go ahead with the proposed divestment of stake in four non-Navratna PSUs.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram said this after Thursday's UPA- Left Coordination Committee meeting in Delhi.
"I have held separate meetings with the Left parties and told them which are the PSUs, which are being identified one by one, for divesting... a small portion of it, subject to certain guidelines. The resources will go into the national investment fund. So that portion was discussed even in the last meeting," said Chidambaram.
Some of the profitable state firms in which small stakes may be sold are Power Finance Corp, miner Neyveli Lignite Corp, National Mineral Development Corp, Indian Railway Finance Corp. and power transmission firm Powergrid.
The Left parties, which have been opposing any move to divest profit-making PSUs, have in a note submitted to the UPA government suggested alternate steps to raise resources for funding social sector projects including taxing security transactions and capital inflows and increasing tax rates on luxury goods and services, including cars.
The Left parties have submitted a note insisting once again on scrapping bids for airport modernisation.
At the meet, the Left parties submitted a note on modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports and also stressed on resource mobilisation. The Government has forwarded it to the Empowered Group of Ministers to take up the issue.
However, the committee side-stepped the contentious issue of EPF rate of interest.
After a two-hour-long meeting of the committee, Chidambaram and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said that Left parties will have separate meetings to discuss the issue of resource mobilisation in greater detail.
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