Hope to deliver more to Centre to stay the fiscal course

The complex and multi-stage process in the strategic disinvestment of IDBI Bank is taking time, but the government remains committed to the transaction, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary Arunish Chawla said in an interview with Harsh Kumar and Asit Ranjan Mishra at his office in New Delhi. In a wide-ranging interview, Chawla said that while defence stocks have been doing well in recent days, more listings of government-owned defence companies will be considered carefully, in a calibrated way, in consultation with the defence ministry. Edited excerpts:

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The markets have recovered strongly. Does that boost your confidence for more listings and stake sales this year compared to 2024-25?

Absolutely, the stock market is back to its previous levels. Market participants tend to look ahead, and current activity is quite encouraging. That certainly gives us confidence to pursue more listings through offer for sale (OFS), more institutional placements, and more follow-on public offers this year. We hope that dividend payouts by public sector enterprises will be even better. We want public enterprises to be role models in the stock market.

When it comes to fresh listings, do you have a number in mind?

It is Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's desire that we share the value of public enterprises with ordinary citizens and common investors. We will adopt a strategy where we do stake sales in small tranches and do it regularly so that small and individual investors get an opportunity to partake in this endeavour. We would like to give this forward guidance to ordinary investors that they should look out for official announcements. Public stocks are a very good hedge in anyone's portfolio because the government is behind them. We enforce fair dividend norms very strictly. It will be our constant endeavour throughout the year to come out with OFS and market sales in small tranches so that small investors can participate. We will also keep greenshoe options regularly so that all small and individual investors interested in public stocks get a share of the buy.

Do you have some numbers in mind? How many listings?

We have developed an in-house DIPAM model, which is a policy model used for market research. The model has four blocks: corporate performance linked to dividends; fair dividends linked to market price; market price; and value helps to decide what and when to sell. It is guided by that model, so no one can ex-ante give a fixed number.