The government is likely to delay the initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to next year, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifies, CNBCTV18 reported citing sources.
According to the report, the government will initially access the ongoing situation between Russia and Ukraine before moving ahead to the IPO.
Earlier in an interview with The Hindu BusinessLine, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said, “When I last commented on this matter, the tension was building up. Now there’s a full-scale war. Therefore, I need to go back and review the situation. Ideally, I’d like to go ahead with it, because it is something we’ve planned for some time purely based on Indian considerations. But now, if global considerations warrant that I need to look at it, I wouldn’t mind looking at it again."
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The development comes as the Russian invasion of Ukraine entered the eighth day on Friday.
Touted to be the biggest IPO of India, the LIC IPO was expected to take place on March 11. With the IPO, the government is planning to sell its 5 per cent stake in LIC to raise Rs 63,000 crore. It is part of the government’s strategy to meet the disinvestment target of Rs 78,000 crore for this fiscal. However, if the LIC IPO gets delayed, the government is likely to miss the disinvestment target by a huge margin, as per the report. The government this fiscal has raised Rs 12,030 crore of its disinvestment target through the strategic sale of Air India.
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