India plans to raise around Rs 58,425 crore through selling Stakes in Companies

India plans to raise around 50 bil­lion rupees ($813.4 mil­lion) this fis­cal year by sell­ing stakes in com­pa­nies includ­ing ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Axis Bank, a senior offi­cial with knowl­edge of pol­i­cy­mak­ers’ dis­cus­sions said on Wednesday.

The sales could be made through an exchange trad­ed fund that could be launched before the end of March, the offi­cial told Reuters, request­ing anonymi­ty as he is not autho­rised to speak to the media.

The ETF would be made up of the gov­ern­men­t’s stake-hold­ings in up to ten com­pa­nies, includ­ing stakes in com­pa­nies held through an off­shoot of the Unit Trust of India known as SUUTI.

The gov­ern­ment holds 11.27 per cent in ITC, 8.18 per cent in L&T and 11.66 per cent in Axis Bank through SUUTI.

SUUTI, which stands for Spec­i­fied Under­tak­ing of The Unit Trust of India, said in a state­ment that it has invit­ed bids from asset man­age­ment com­pa­nies to help it set up the ETF.

“The size of the ETF could be about 50 bil­lion rupees though the final deci­sion would be tak­en in con­sul­ta­tion with the asset man­age­ment com­pa­ny,” the offi­cial said.

Last month, Arvind Mayaram, finance sec­re­tary at the finance min­istry, said that the gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing float­ing an ETF to sell shares held by SUUTI.

Ear­li­er this year, the gov­ern­ment sold a 9 per cent stake in Axis Bank to insti­tu­ion­al investors.

In his maid­en bud­get in July, Finance Min­is­ter Arun Jait­ley set a tar­get of 584.25 bil­lion rupees ($9.5 bil­lion) to be raised through the sale of shares in state-run com­pa­nies and minor­i­ty stakes in pri­vate companies.

In March, the gov­ern­ment raised 44 bil­lion rupees through anoth­er ETF com­pris­ing shares of 10 state-run com­pa­nies includ­ing ONGC, Indi­an Oil and Coal India.