New Delhi, July 14: The Inter-Ministerial Group on divestment in oil marketing and refining PSU -- Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) is likely to meet in a day or two to give finishing touches to the draft share-holders agreement for circulation among bidders for their comments. The meeting assumes importance in the wake of due diligence that the government is likely to start by early next month for divestment of 34 per cent equity in HPCL, where global oil majors Shell, Kuwait Petroleum, Saudi Aramco and British Petroleum are vying with domestic giants like Reliance and Essar.
The officials from the ministries of finance, petroleum and disinvestment will meet later this week to discuss the programme for divestment including setting up data room and pre-bid meetings before deciding to call financial bids possibly in November, sources asociated with the disinvestment process said.
Meeting is expected to take stock of the progress made so far and work towards finalising modalities for starting the due diligence.
Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie had last week said that work on setting up the data room for HPCL was on but clarified that due diligence has not started.
Bureau Report