Govt to soon come out with a list of strategic sectors: DEA Secretary

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in May announced that there will be a maximum of four public sector companies in strategic sectors

In line with the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ package, Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj on Tuesday said the government will soon come out with a list of strategic sectors, and public sector companies in non-strategic sectors will be privatised.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in May announced that there will be a maximum of four public sector companies in strategic sectors, and state-owned firms in other segments will eventually be privatised. “One important thing that I would like to mention is that the government should soon come out (with guidelines on) privatisation of the public sector companies,” Bajaj said at India Idea Summit here.

“This is a major announcement. I would say after 1956 when we decided to have public sector enterprises as our showpieces, this is the first time that any government has said that we will not have companies in the non-strategic sector in the public sector and in the strategic sectors also we will have less number of companies,” he said. Bajaj also said the government will soon decide on privatisation of six Indian airports, including those in Amritsar, Indore, Ranchi, Trichy, Bhubaneswar and Raipur.