New Delhi: The central government plans to divest its stake in the national passenger carrier Air India by this year-end Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said on Friday

The bidding process is expected to be finished by June, by when the winning bidder will be chosen, and all the “legal formalities” will be completed by December, Sinha said.

As per the plan, the Air India group will be divested as four different entities and that the “information memorandum” will be issued in sometime.

Speaking a day after the Union Budget for 2018-19 was presented, Sinha said: “Information Memorandum will be out soon... We plan to decide on the winning bidder by June and the legal formalities will be concluded by December this year.”

In his Budget speech on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: “The government has also initiated the process of strategic disinvestment in 24 Central Public Sector Enterprises. This includes strategic privatisation of Air India.” On the other key issue regarding the exact debt level of the airline and the ways to deal with it, Sinha said that it is being looked at by a ministerial group − Air India-specific Alternative Mechanism − headed by Jaitley.

Apart from modalities surrounding the divestment process, the ministerial group has been mandated to decide on key issues such as treatment of Air India’s debt and hiving-off of its assets.

Indo-Asian News Service