PSU NEWS INDIA

The IPO of Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) opens today and the state-owned company is offering 25.34 crore shares at a price band of ₹17-19 per equity share. The ₹481- crore RVNL IPO will close on April 3. RVNL will be the third rail PSU to be listed after RITES and IRCON. RVNL will not receive any proceeds from the offer for sale since the government is selling about 12% stake in the company. After the IPO, the central government's stake in RVNL will drop around 88%. RVNL has reserved around 6.5 lakh shares for eligible employees. Both retail investors and employees who bid for the shares will get a discount in the IPO. As of 3pm, RVNL IPO was subscribed 0.07 times, according to NSE data. Umesh Mehta, head of research at Samco Securities, said: “The year 2018 saw a dismal listing of IPOs. However, this year seems to be healthy yet again for companies to list on the primary markets with RVNL opening today, Metropolis Healthcare next week and Polycab to be out soon."

Agartala, March 2 A Rs 9,000 crore gas-grid project has been approved to transport natural gas among northeastern states and West Bengal, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said here on Saturday. “There is huge amount of natural gas available in Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast states is being tapped into for the Rs 9,265 crore North East Gas Grid (NEGG). The government has okayed this project to transport gas among the northeastern states as well as West Bengal via Siliguri,” Pradhan said inaugurating the Rs 215 crore Sonamura Gas Collecting station of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). An ONGC official said the NEGG is a joint venture of five oil and natural gas companies — Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC), Oil India Limited (OIL), Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) and ONGC. Huge onshore gas reserves have been found in Assam, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Tripura, which is also t