(FE)
Indian government favours creation of integrated companies in the public sector but would ensure that it does not result in monopoly, the visiting Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said. “The kind of robust market that is emerging in India… We have segmented companies. Now we want to create integrated companies. Certainly, I can assure one thing that there will be multi entity. We will have mixed basket,” Pradhan told reporters on Monday at a news conference here on the sidelines of the CERAWeek conference.
The week-long conference is being attended by top world leaders from the oil and natural gas industry and minister from major oil producing and consuming countries. Pradhan was responding to questions on reports about merger of major state-owned companies like ONGC, IOC and GAIL, following Union Government’s announcement in the budget about merger of companies and creation of one single entities.
Pradhan, however, did not respond directly on the merger of these major state-owner oil PSUs in India. “I want to assure you that we want to create an integrated company E&P to downstream,” he said, adding there will be some mid-level company and there will be some big companies.
