Handover of Air India to the Tata Group will bolster government’s privatisation roadmap, which has been significantly lagging the Budget targets so far. Tata has taken over Rs 15,300 crore worth of Air India debt and paid Rs 2,700 crore to the government in cash.The government is also hoping to bring the initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) before the end of this fiscal year, while privatisation of Neelachal Ispat Nigam is expected to be completed shortly.
Depending upon the size of the offering, LIC’s IPO and other transactions could help the Centre partly bridge its Rs 1.75-lakh-crore FY22 disinvestment target, of which less than 10 per cent has been raised so far.
