People's Democracy

CITU Opposes So Called ‘National Investment Fund’

The CITU secretariat issued the following statements on November 4.

THE CITU opposes the ‘General Scheme for Operationalisation’ of so called ‘National Investment Fund’ under the camouflage of funding ‘social sector expenditure’ or reviving of sick PSUs. In reality, the National Investment Fund is nothing but an instrument of privatising the profit making PSUs through phased disinvestments of their shares. In a welfare state, expenditure on social sector schemes is a continuous process and any idea of funding the same through one time disposal of some shares lacks sanity besides exposing total insincerity of purpose on the part of the government.

It is ironical that though there is no reference of disinvestments in NCMP which actually mandates revival of sick revivable PSUs, the UPA government since the last 16 months has been prioritising disinvestments as its main agenda, ignoring revival of sick central PSUs. The present decision to form a National Investment Fund (NIF), therefore, appears to be yet another attempt to institutionalise ‘Disinvestment’ on the plea of social sector and sick PSUs. Further, the return on the NIF, proposed to be used for declared objectives would be peanuts in the area of resource mobilisation. As a matter of fact, overall profit earned by CPSUs can take care of revival of some sick CPSUs, either through merger or through guaranteed orders.

The CITU opposes the idea of cashing on profit making CPSUs only for resource mobilisation of social projects, leaving private majors whose profits have gone up by leaps and bounds during last few years.

The CITU, therefore, again reiterates that it would oppose any move of backdoor privatisation of PSUs through disinvestments of shares in profit making PSUs in the name of NIF, which is apprehended to be NDF (National Disinvestment Fund). The CITU calls upon the trade union movement to mobilise and oppose such attempts to weaken and privatise the public sector units.