SAIL OFS subscribed over 5 times; govt to garner Rs 2,664 cr from stake sale

The government is expected to garner Rs 2,664 crore from offloading 10 per stake sale in India's largest steelmaker SAIL through an offer for sale (OFS) which was subscribed over five times on Friday.

The shares sought were 522.89 per cent of the overall issue size on the final day of bidding, as per provisional data available on bourses.

Earlier this week, the government had proposed OFS of 20.6 crore shares of face value of Rs 10 each (base offer size), with an option to additionally sell up to 20.6 crore equity shares.

With this, the total OFS size goes up to 41.3 crore shares and government is expected to mobilise Rs 2,664 crore at a floor price of Rs 64 per share.

The indicative price of bids that came in on Friday was Rs 65.75, exchange data showed.

SAIL shares closed 4.39 per cent down on the BSE at Rs 70.20.

The SAIL OFS is part of the government's disinvestment programme through which it is targeting to raise a record Rs 2.1 lakh crore in the current fiscal ending March 31, 2021.

So far, the government has raised Rs 28,298.26 crore from disinvestment proceeds. This includes Rs 14,453.77 crore received as dividend from state-owned firms. The remaining Rs 13,844.49 crore proceeds include Rs 1,065.37 crore from selling shares in NTPC share buyback.

A Rs 4,600-crore initial public offering (IPO) of the Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC), a public sector undertaking under the railways ministry, will open on January 18. The IPO comprises up to 178.2 crore shares of face value of Rs 10 each.

The government is expected to mobilise Rs 1,544 crore at the upper price band of Rs 25-26 per share.

The government is most likely to miss its disinvestment target by a wide margin and the fiscal deficit is not likely to be anywhere near the target of 3.5 per cent of the GDP in 2020-21 (April 2020 to March 2021).

While privatisation of firms such as Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Air India has been pushed to the next fiscal due to COVID-19-related delays, tax collections have been hit hard as restrictions imposed to curb coronavirus dented incomes all around.