'PSUs line mega investment plan of Rs 1,42,000 cr'

New Delhi, Mar 20: The Central Public Sector Units (CPSUs) have lined up investment plans worth Rs 1,42,000 crore for the financial year 2006-07 contributing a large pool of the resources, as much as 47 per cent, from the internal accruals, which resulted from their impressive bottomline aided by a healthy industrial growth.

As much as Rs 94,491 crore will be ploughed into seven key sectors of petroleum and natural gas, power, telecom, nuclear energy, coal, aviation and steel, an ASSOCHAM Eco Pulse (AEP) Study has revealed.

Thanks to improved topline and bottomline performance of the CPSUs, a tidy figure of Rs 66,257 crore would accrue from their internal accruals which also resulted from a healthy growth in the economy and the well-performing sectors that they are engaged in.

These PSUs, the AEP analysis shows, would also tap the debt market to the extent of Rs 25,327 crore and would depend on External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) for Rs 7,124 crore.

''The sustained GDP growth of over eight per cent has contributed to the health of the PSUs. It is right time for the government to disinvest at least a minority stake in these firms,'' ASSOCHAM President Anil K Agarwal said.

The total Plan Investment of Rs 1,42,000 crore by the CPSUs for the next financial year would be 23.38 per cent higher than Rs 1,15,446 crore for the current fiscal ending March 2005-06.

According to the ASSOCHAM Eco Pulse Study, the largest investment of Rs 36,003 crore would be pumped into the PSUs in the petroleum and natural gas sector. Investment of Rs 14,354 crore has already been approved for the ONGC followed by ONGC Videsh Ltd at Rs 6,654 crore and Indian Oil Corporation at Rs 5,628 crore.

Government firms in the power sector have increased their investment for 2006-07 to Rs 23,920 crore from Rs 17,677 crore. The National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC) has firmed up total outlay of Rs 11,325 crore for 2006-07 against Rs 8,553 crore in the previous year.

The next biggest investment of Rs 4,849 crore would take place in the Power Grid Corporation, followed by National Hydro Electric Power Corporation (Rs 2,883 crore) and Damodar Valley Corporation (Rs 2,302 crore).

The AEP study found that it is ringing investment all over the communication and IT sector in the State-owned firms like BSNL (Rs 16,931 crore) and MTNL (Rs 2,298 crore).

With increased government focus on Nuclear Energy, the Centre has approved a planned outlay of Rs 4,294 crore for the PSUs under the Department of Atomic Energy.

Bulk of this investment, as much as Rs 3,400 crore would go into the investment by Nuclear Power Corporation followed by Uranium Corporation of India.

Thanks to big plans of Rs 3,063 crore by Coal India Ltd, PSUs engaged in the coal sector would see an increased investment of Rs 4,630 crore for 2006-07 from Rs 2,997 crore in the previous year.

Airport modernisation seems on target with the Airports Authority of India managing an approved investment of Rs 1,506 crore, a huge increase of 58 per cent over the money spent last year.

Air-India has got the approval for Rs 486 crore worth of investment in 2006-07, while its peer Indian previosuly known as Indian Airlines would be spending Rs 706 crore in this fiscal.

The core PSUs Steel Authority of India Ltd and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd would increase their planned investment by over 100 per cent to Rs 3,217 crore. The Rashtriya Ispat would see a big increase of 469 per cent in its investment from Rs 255 crore to Rs 1,452 crore.

UNI