Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020

By Sagar Sen

NEW DELHI – The government aims to sell its entire stake in Central Electronics Ltd in the current financial year ending March, a senior finance ministry official said.

"We are in fairly advanced stage of the stake sale and we hope to complete the transaction before March," the official told Cogencis.

However, the official declined to give the possible size of the transaction, adding that negotiations were underway with prospective investors.

In February, the government had invited expressions of interest to sell its 100% stake in Central Electronics, but extended the deadline thrice because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had finally set Jun 15 as the deadline.

Central Electronics, established to commercially exploit indigenous technologies developed by national research and development institutions, brought out the country's first solar cell and solar panel.

As on Mar 31, 2019, the net worth of the company was 759.9 mln rupees.

This is the government's second attempt to sell 100% stake in Central Electronics. It had previously invited expressions of interest in 2018.

For 2020-21 (Apr-Mar), the Union Budget has set a divestment target of 2.1 trln rupees, including 1.2 trln rupees from divestment of public sector companies and 900 bln rupees from the sale of stake in public sector banks and financial institutions. The divestment target for the current financial year is more than four times of what the government had raised last year.

The disinvestment process has been severely hit by the pandemic and the government has so far raised only 61.38 bln rupees through the process.  End

Edited by Mainak Moitra

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