Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said privatisation of BPCL will be without the company's equity shareholding of 61.65% in Numaligarh Refinery in Assam.
The
Cabinet
Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved the strategic
disinvestment of the Centre’s entire stake in Bharat Petroleum
(BPCL), Shipping Corp, THDC India, and NEEPCO, and most of its stake
in Container Corp, while giving up management control in these
companies.
It
also gave an in-principle approval for the government to reduce stake
in certain state-owned companies to below 51 per cent in some while
retaining majority stake management control.
These
major divestment decisions were taken even as the government races
against time to meet its highest ever divestment target of Rs 1.05
trillion for 2019-20. The Centre hopes that disinvestment proceeds
will make up for some of the revenue shortfall that is expected this
year.
While
announcing the decisions in a post-Cabinet meeting media briefing,
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said privatisation of BPCL
will be without the company’s equity shareholding of 61.65 per cent
in Numaligarh Refinery in Assam.
“The
Numaligarh Refinery will be carved out of BCPL and will be taken over
by another state-owned company,” said Sitharaman.
Numaligarh
Refinery is the largest producer of paraffin wax in the country. The
GRM of NRL during FY19 was seen at $11.8 a barrel. The remaining
38.35 per cent stake is held by the Assam government (12.35 per cent)
and Oil India (26 per cent).
Of
the total 249.4 million tonne per annum (MTPA) refining capacity in
India, BPCL has around 15 per cent or 38.3 MTPA. BPCL also has 15,177
retail outlets in India.
The
major reason why Numaligarh was kept out of the strategic
disinvestment was because of its importance being part of the Assam
Accord of 1985 signed between All Assam Students’ Union and the
Centre following the anti-immigrant agitation.
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