THE CHANGING FACE OF INDIA'S PSUs

Many of the central government-owned companies have undergone a makeover, with some of them now counted among the country's premium institutions

- S.P. TULSIAN

I still remember Rahul Gandhi's words: "Hindustan Aeronautics does not have money to pay salaries. The company is going bankrupt." That was in January 2020, when Gandhi was criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mismanagement of PSUs. But the stock markets took an entirely different view of the PSU. In barely three years, the share price of HAL witnessed a stupendous eight-fold rally to touch a high of Rs 4,135 in August 2023 from a low of around Rs 500 sometime in 2020. This prompted PM Modi to say in the Parliament recently, "Bet on those PSU companies, which are abused by the opposition parties."

Like HAL, many of the central government-owned companies have undergone a makeover, with some of them now counted among the country's premium institutions. The shareholding pattern of these PSUs shows the growing interest of foreign institutional investors in them in the recent past. These include PSUs such as BEL, Mazagaon Dock Shipbuilders, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers, Bharat Dynamics, among others. The share price of these companies has gained two-to six-fold over the past five years.