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New Delhi : Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on September 28, 2017, reviewed capital expenditure programme and status of dividend distribution of central public sector undertakings and authorities with the Secretaries of Ministries/Departments and CMDs of major CPSEs concerned including Petroleum, Defence, Power, Road Transport, Railways, Coal, Mines, Steel, Atomic Energy. Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa and Secretary, Economic Affairs, Subhash Chandra Garg were present at the meeting.
Jaitley while addressing the Secretaries and CMDs stressed that the CPSEs not only complete their budgeted capital expenditure but should also look to aggressively push capital expenditure in the interest of boosting investment in Indian economy. Secretaries/senior officers from the 10 Ministries and the CMDs/Directors (Finance) of the CPSUs apprised the Finance Minister that their capital expenditure programme for the current year are completely on track for achieving the capital expenditure of Rs 3.85 lakh crore budgeted in 2017-18. Some PSUs informed that they were planning to increase their capital expenditure programme, which in the aggregate, might be of the order of additional Rs 25,000 crore.
The Finance Minister while appreciating the commitments of the Ministries and CPSUs assured that the Government would make available adequate resources but no slackness under any circumstances would be acceptable. He indicated that the capital expenditure programme would again be reviewed at the end of November/early December, according to a PIB release.
In the discussions for raising capital investments, it also came up to attention that most PSUs have very low or no debt on their balance sheet which is reflected in their low debt to equity ratios. CPSEs were, therefore, asked to raise more debt and not to rely entirely on cash and free reserves for finding new investments and capital expenditure.