By IANS
New Delhi : The government Saturday launched the National Investment Fund (NIF) that will get the proceeds from the divestment of stakes in state-run enterprises to meet their capital expenditure and finance social projects.
“All proceeds from divestment of public sector enterprises will be channelised into the NIF,” an official statement said, after Finance Minister P. Chidambaram officially launched the project here.
“The NIF will be maintained outside the Consolidated Fund of India and is to be professionally managed to provide sustainable returns to the government without depleting the corpus,” the statement added.
Seventy-five percent of the annual income of NIF will be used to fund selected social sector schemes that promote education, health and employment and the rest will be used to meet the capital requirements of profitable state-run units.
UTI Asset Management Company, SBI Funds Management and LIC Mutual Fund Asset Management Company, which manage the assets of the three largest public sector mutual funds, have been appointed fund managers for NIF.
The three fund managers have been initially given Rs.3.68 billion, Rs.3.69 billion and Rs.2.57 billion, respectively, from the money received by sale of equity in Power Grid Corp of India Ltd.
An advisory board has also been constituted under S.B. Mathur, former chairman of Life Insurance Corp, B.D. Narang, former chairman of Oriental Bank of Commerce and D.H. Pai Panandikar, president of the RPG Foundation.