The Finance Ministry on Wednesday reviewed the capital expenditure plans of 13 big PSUs, including ONGC, SAIL and BHEL, so that proposals to kick start the investment cycle could be placed before the new Minister for further action soon.
"Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram today reviewed the capex plan of 13 big PSUs. The whole idea is to prepare ground for the new Finance Minister and the new government to foster growth," a senior finance ministry official said.
"There will be separate review of capex expenditure plans of power and telecom sector PSUs before May 26," the official added.
Narendra Modi, who steered the BJP-led NDA to a stunning victory, will be sworn in as Prime Minister on May 26 at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The official further expressed the hope that the PSUs' capex expenditure plans in the current fiscal year will be higher than their capex expenditure plan in 2013-14."Last fiscal, we had capex expenditure plans of 2.57 lakh crore for all the PSUs. We achieved 2.48 lakh crore capex expenditure. This year we should look to better it," he said.
PSU bank market share
The market share of PSU banks will decline sharply to 60 per cent by 2025 unless adequate steps are taken by the government to dilute its stake and help them improve performance, says an RBI committee report.
It further said that the market share of private sector banks is projected to rise to about a third by 2025 from just over 12 per cent in 2000, while the foreign banks would continue to remain marginal players. "The market share of the public sector banks will decline from 80 per cent in 2000 to just over 60 per cent in 2025," the report said.
"Public sector banks will continue to face the dual problem of significant asset quality stress and slender capitalisation, impacting their growth, unless major governance changes occur and the government is willing to dilute its stake so that the burden of raising additional capital falls more lightly on the government," it said.