Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday opposed the National Monetisation Pipeline that seeks to monetise assets of Public Sector Undertakings and informed the Legislative Assembly that he would write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing the State’s objection to the proposal. He said monetisation of assets of public sector units did not augur well for the nation.
Responding to special calling attention motions on the issued, moved by legislators of the Congress and CPI, Mr Stalin said that the assets of PSUs are “our assets”. Everyone knew that the PSUs were formed to served as the “root of the country’s development” and create employment opportunities and for small and medium industries. “Profit alone is not the objective of PSUs that were set up for the welfare of the people,” the Chief Minister said.
In a related development, State Industries Minister Thangam Thennarasu argued that the views of State Governments must have been obtained before rolling out the National Monetisation Pipeline. Pointing out that the DMK had favoured nationalisation of banks and transport corporations, he said that considering that State had provided vast land resources for setting up PSUs, the Union Government must taken into account their views before any monetisation plan was rolled out.