The Centre on Monday announced approving strategic disinvestment of Central Electronics Limited, a public sector enterprise (CPSE). This is the second privatisation this fiscal year, after Air India.

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“The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) empowered alternative mechanism (AM) has approved the highest price bid of Nandal Finance and Leasing for sale of 100 per cent equity shareholding of the government in Central Electronics Ltd (CEL),” a Finance Ministry statement said.

The winning bidder offered over ₹210 crore against the reserve price of ₹194 crore.

Second attempt

This is the second attempt at selling CEL after the process in 2016 did not attract any financial bid.

The Ministry statement said the disinvestment process was done in a transparent manner, with due regard to confidentiality of the bidders, through multi-layered decision making involving the inter-ministerial group (IMG), the core group of secretaries on disinvestment (CDG) and the empowered alternative mechanism (AM) at the apex Ministerial level. Transaction adviser, legal adviser and asset valuer supported the process.

“The next step will be to issue the letter of intent (LoI) and then sign the share purchase agreement following which the conditions precedent would need to be satisfied by the successful bidder, the company and the government. It is expected that the transaction will be completed within FY22,” the statement said.

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CEL was established in 1974 to commercially exploit indigenous technologies developed by National Laboratories and R&D institutions.

It has developed a number of products on its own and in association with the premier national and international laboratories, including Defence outfits.

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It is considered a pioneer in the country in the field of Solar Photovoltaic (SPV). Its solar products have been qualified to international standards. It has also developed axle counter systems that are being used in Railway signalling systems for safe running of trains. Railway products include single section digital axle counters (SSDAC), high availability SSDAC (HA-SSDAC), multi-section digital axle counter (MSDAC) and block proving by axle counter (BPAC) using universal fail-safe block interface (UFSBI). CEL has developed a number of critical components for strategic applications and is supplying these items to Defence.

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