No buyers for Air India: Govt mulling sale of 100% stake

After having failed to attract the buyers under the current guidelines, the government is reportedly planning to sell the Air India completely by doing away with the clause to retain a minority stake in the debt-ridden airline.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the Union government is ready to "re-examine" its privatisation process and may not insist on keeping 24 percent of the company.

In a major setback to the Air India disinvestment process, the government had on May 31 said no initial bids were received for the proposed stake sale of Air India. The Ministry of Civil Aviation received close to 160 queries from potential buyers of Air India. However, none of them translated into an Expression of Interest (EoI).

The deadline for submission of Expression of Interest (EoI) ended on May 31 with not a single bidder evincing interest in the airline, nearly one year after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government gave its nod for the stake sale.

In nearly two decades, this is the second time that Air India stake sale has not taken off. Back in 2001, during the then NDA government, the disinvestment process was scrapped.