Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other members during the presentation of the Union Budget 2022-23 in Parliament, in New Delhi.
The government’s receipts from disinvestment in the next financial year beginning April are pegged at Rs 65,000 crore, down from the estimated Rs 78,000 crore in the current year. With budgetary disinvestment targets rarely met, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s fourth budget slashed receipts to Rs 78,000 crore in the current fiscal from Rs 1.75 lakh crore in the earlier budget.
The government has so far raised Rs 12,030 crore through disinvestment and strategic sale of PSUs. This includes Rs 2,700 crore from privatization of Air India and Rs 9,330 crore through sale of minority stake in various central public sector enterprises (CPSEs). In the current financial year, apart from the strategic sale of BPCL, Shipping Corp, Container Corp, RINL and Pawan Hans, a major disinvestment of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is in the works.
The government has missed the disinvestment target for three consecutive years. In 2020-21, against the budgetary disinvestment target of Rs 2.10 lakh crore, the government had raised Rs 37,897 crore. In 2019-20, disinvestment receipts stood at Rs 50,298 crore, which is lower than the revised estimate of Rs 65,000 crore and the budget estimate of Rs 1.05 lakh crore.
In the financial years 2018-19 and 2017-18, the government had exceeded the disinvestment target set in the budget. In 2018-19, the disinvestment collection stood at Rs 84,972 crore against the budget target of Rs 80,000 crore. In 2017-18, it bettered the target of Rs 1 lakh crore and raised a record Rs 1,00,056 crore.
In 2016-17, the government missed the budgetary disinvestment target. While the target of Rs 56,500 crore was set in the budget, the government managed to raise Rs 46,247 crore. In 2015-16, the government received Rs 23,996 crore from disinvestment of CPSEs, which is less than the budget target of Rs 69,500 crore.
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