Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Huge relief for FM as CIL decides to pay Rs 16,485 cr dividend to make up for disinvestment shortfall in FY'14

CIL CMD Narsing Rao
FINALLY some good news for finance minister P Chidambaram who is battling to achieve the disinvestment target of Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal as PSU Coal India has decided to pay around Rs 16,485 crore as interim dividend. In a bid to bridge the fiscal deficit, the government had given the option to Coal India to either go in for disinvestment or...
pay special dividend. "The board has approved Rs 29 per share dividend," Coal India chairman S Narsing Rao said after the board meeting in Kolkata on Tuesday. "This was the main agenda and rest were operational matters," Rao said.
The largest coal producer of the world opted to pay higher dividend of of Rs 29 per share, amounting to Rs 18,317 crore, for 2013-14. Since the government owns 90 percent stake in the Maharatna company it will get Rs 16,485 crore. The government will also get dividend distribution tax of Rs 3,113.05 crore from CIL and its subsidiaries. Altogether, the Maharatna miner will pay the Centre Rs 19,598.76 crore from CIL and its subsidiaries by way of dividend and its tax. Last fiscal, Coal India paid an interim dividend of Rs 9.7 per share and its total contribution was around Rs 8,000 crore. The record date for dividend is January 20. The government had originally planned to divest 10 percent stake in CIL which would fetched over Rs 16,000 crore. It is now getting nearly a similar amount as special dividend. As regards the disinvestment in PSUs, government has so far garnered about Rs 3,000 crore. An additional Rs 2,000 crore is expected to flow in from NHPC buyback.
The government has also drawn a blueprint to raise Rs 13,000 crore from stake sale in Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), BHEL, Engineers India, HAL and issuance of PSU Exchange Traded Fund in the remaining period of this fiscal. This will also help the government in containing fiscal deficit. 

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