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• With no immediate decision on buybacks, the government is now focusing on secondary stake sales to meet the divestment target of Rs 40,000 crore, reports CNBC-TV18's Aakansha Sethi.The Finance Ministry has not been able to get a consensus on the public sector units' buyback plan. Several people, for instance Montek Singh Ahluwalia and several PSUs have responded saying that they are not in favour of PSUs actually putting in money in buybacks. Even administrative ministries coal, power and petroleum have been against buyback and that's why you haven't seen the Cabinet take this up. It was listed on the Cabinet agenda two weeks back and was not taken up for discussion today. With the government saying they are not going to force PSUs to go ahead with buybacks, there does not seem to be any immediate indication of when this will actually take place.

• So the other options on the fresh disinvestment strategy were of course SUUTI stake sale and pledging of shares. In that case too, bankers have expressed concerns on granting loans to the new asset management company that would be set up in place for SUUTI. Hence, the government is now looking at secondary stake sales and auctions.

• Remember the SEBI board had given the nod to promoter shareholding being auctioned on exchanges and this is something that the government is looking at. It's waiting for SEBI to come out with the guidelines which is when it expects to go ahead with the auctions in those PSUs which come under top 100 companies via market cap, which is the condition that has been set by SEBI. So, that is now the plan to meet the Rs 40,000 crore disinvestment target given that the other options haven't really worked out.

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