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• Despite the finance ministry nudging profit-making public sector units (PSUs) to pay more dividends, NTPC will stick to the 38 per cent payout it has been giving shareholders for some years.The company, whose board is meeting on Friday to take a final call, will, however, keep a window open to offer a special dividend as an extra, just in case the ministry insists, according to a senior company official.Dividend at 38 per cent will mean a total payout of Rs 3,200 crore, much of which will go to the 84.50 per cent stakeholder, the government. In September, the company already paid an interim dividend of 80 paisa per share.

• Earlier this month economic affairs secretary R Gopalan met the managements of oil, power, coal companies and banks in the public sector to gently pressure them to pay higher dividends. The government needs a lot of extra revenue to balance its budget. NTPC chairman Arup Roy Choudhury declined to say anything ahead of the company’s board meeting.Generally, profit-making PSUs pay at least 20 per cent as dividend.This time the finance ministry has asked this to be raised to at least 30 per cent. State-run companies together have cash balances of around Rs 6,00,000 crore and the government hopes they will dip into this to pay higher dividends.

• A government official had told reporters on Wednesday that efforts were being made to get Rs 7,000 crore as extra dividend. This is besides around Rs 1,500 crore it would get as additional dividend distribution tax. Already, the government has mobilised Rs 25,978 crore as dividend from profit-making PSUs.The government is facing difficulty in keeping fiscal deficit at 4.6 per cent of GDP this year. The slowdown has played havoc with its tax mobilisation and analysts fear that the fiscal deficit may overshoot the target and be between 5.5 and 6 per cent.

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