Experts seek clear-cut divestment policy

Experts participating in a two-day national seminar on 'Divestment' in Visakhapatnam on Monday urged the Centre to announce in unequivocal terms its divestment policy to make the best use of the proceeds for proper reinvestment in different sectors.

They opposed 'indiscriminate' divestment, but justified the proposal which should not be equated with privatisation. The divestment should be studied sector-wise on the need-based judgement through its policy document, which should spell out "why, where and what" of it, besides the objectives and modes.

The seminar, jointly organised by the Institute of Public Sector Management, Andhra University and the International Management Institute, New Delhi, also sought a public debate on divestment, besides studying the Chinese and other models before embarking on the process.

U K Dikshit, director, Standing Conference on Public Enterprises, Centre for Development, New Delhi said that the Union Divestment Minister Arun Shourie had convened a meeting of all the chief executive officers of the public sectors on September 28 to discuss the various aspects of divestment threadbare.

He said that critical sectors -- like oil and power -- need not go in for larger divestment but keep the higher stakes with themselves as they had direct bearing on the public, whereas the government could privatise the food and other consumer sectors as it did in the case of Modern Foods.

Dikshit said that the government should not go by the profit-or-loss concept, but by long-term interests of the nation and the public before going in for divestment.

He urged the authorities to draw lessons from China, where dismantling of the public sector had begun long back with economic freedom gaining supremacy over political freedom for prosperity.

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