No immediate plan to sell stake in AI: Minister

New Delhi, March 5

The government today ruled out any immediate plan to divest stake in Air India or rope in a strategic partner for the loss-making national carrier.

Instead, the focus in the next 4-6 months will be to improve the airline’s on-time performance, which has already gone up in the past few weeks, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma said.

Sharma batted for a strong national airline, noting that it was important to have flag carrier in the country.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while setting an ambitious target to raise Rs 69,500 crore through divestment in 2015-16 Budget, had said, “This will include both disinvestment in loss-making units, and some strategic disinvestment.” Industry and aviation experts have long been demanding privatisation of Air India citing huge losses being reported by it, though the financial condition of the private carriers is also not quite good.

Air India’s net loss came down to Rs 5,389 crore in the last fiscal compared with Rs 5,490 crore in 2012-13 fiscal and Rs 7,559.74 crore in FY-12. — PTI