NEW DELHI: The disinvestment of state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) seems to be uncertain as the country’s second-biggest refiner failed to get bidders. An official said, it has attracted only one bidder so far, whereas the government was expecting global majors such as Saudi Aramco.
“Due to environmental concerns and ESG considerations, very few bidders showed interest in BPCL. We only had one bidder and we thought that was not a competitive bidding,” said a finance ministry official on the condition of anonymity.
In its last budget 2021-22, the government pitched aggressively for the disinvestment of government entities including Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Shipping Corporation of India, Air India, Neelachal Ispat Nigam Limited, Container Corporation of India, IDBI Bank, BEML Limited and Pawan Hans, among others. It had set an ambitious disinvestment target of Rs 1,75,000 crore.
The sale of BPCL, where the government is to sell its entire stake of 52.98%, hasn’t made much progress since last April. It seems difficult for the company to complete the sale process in this fiscal year too. As per reports, only 3 bidders — Vedanta group, Apollo Global Management Inc. and I Squared Capital Advisors — have shown interest in it. Among these, only Anil Agarwal-led-Vedanta is in the race.
In fact, Vedanta Group’s chairman, in one of his interviews, said his company is willing to spend $12 billion for the deal. “The market cap of the company is about $11 billion to $12 billion, so this is the amount of investment we’re looking at….We’re not going to bid aggressively, but we will put the right price,” said Agarwal said.