India's dividend demand will prove self-defeating

NTPC

18/06/2025 13:00

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist.  The opinions expressed are her own.

By Shritama Bose

MUMBAI, June 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - India's expectations from its state-owned enterprises are unrealistic. New Delhi wants the profitable ones to make larger and more frequent dividend payments. That can boost government revenue, but the push overlooks companies' shrinking cash piles.

State companies paid out record dividends worth 1.5 trillion rupees ($17.31 billion) during the year ended March, with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation ONGC.NS and lenders including State Bank of India SBI.NS among the top payers. Overall, public sector companies distributed about a quarter of total dividends in the last financial year despite accounting for one tenth of India's market capitalisation.

Now the South Asian country is asking the cohort to increase dividends by about 25% for the financial year to the end of March 2026, Bloomberg reported this month, citing sources, and make the payments on a quarterly basis rather than annually. This looks like a step in the opposite direction of the government's own guideline from November, which relaxed the minimum yearly dividend requirement to the lower of 30% of net profit or 4% of net worth.

There is mounting budget angst. Earlier this year, Arunish Chawla, a secretary in the ministry of finance, argued high payouts are why mutual funds ought to include state-run firms in their investment portfolios. One unspoken aim may be to support public valuations. This would, in turn, help the government to raise revenue by selling state assets. Ensuring payouts at three-month intervals also could help stabilise inflows: tax income turned lumpy after GDP growth slowed through part of last year. The latest personal income tax cuts also will eat into future revenue.

     Companies have limited room to step up, however. The cumulative free cash flows after deducting common dividends at eight large non-financial state-owned enterprises stood at 615 billion rupees ($7.14 billion) in March 2024, may have turned negative as of March, and could fall further by 2026, per estimates by Fitch Ratings. That's because the capital expenditure of companies like energy producer NTPC NTPC.NS and utilities provider Power Grid PGRD.NS is rising.

     Investors typically shun or discount government-controlled companies precisely because they are vulnerable to official meddling in how they manage their finances. Making too high demands on the state sector is one way to ensure it shrinks sooner rather than later.

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CONTEXT NEWS

     The Indian government is asking state-run companies to increase dividend payouts by about 25% during the financial year to March 31, 2026, to bolster finances in a volatile global environment, Bloomberg reported on June 2, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the matter.

     The government is requesting companies to make these payments on a quarterly basis rather than annually, the report added, and wants to collect about 900 billion rupees ($10.5 billion) through dividends in the year through March 2026 compared with 740.2 billion rupees received in the previous year.

State-run firms' shares beat the broader market on total returns https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/bypreornrve/chart.png

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Ujjaini Dutta)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on BOSE/shritama.bose@thomsonreuters.com))