The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Thursday approved the proposed plan to divest 10 per cent of the government's stake in defence equipment manufacturer public sector unit Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). Currently, the government possesses 100 per cent stake in the defence PSU.

The stake sale in HAL through an initial public offer (IPO) will provide 5 per cent discount to company employees and retail investors.

However, the latest approval for stake sale came even as the government deferred disinvests of its stakes in Nalco and RINL because of differences over pricing of the shares.

With the approval, HAL joined the growing list of PSUs in which the government is looking to sell stakes.

There are at least 8 PSUs, including Hindustan Copper Ltd, SAIL, BHEL, Oil India, MMTC, and NMDC, in which the government is preparing to sell its stakes off during the current fiscal year. Including HAL, the Cabinet has so far approved stake sales in five PSUs.

The government has set a target to generate Rs 30,000 crore via divesting its stakes in various PSUs before the end of current fiscal. But the process of divesting stakes is yet to begin, even as seven months of the current fiscal year have already passed.

However, Disinvestment Secretary Mohammad Haleem Khan said that the Department of Disinvestment (DoD) was confident that it would be able to meet the set target of fetching Rs 30,000 crore from divesting the government's stakes in PSUs before the end of current fiscal.