RIL keen to sell stake in Haryana SEZ

With an aim of roping in a strategic partner for its Haryana SEZ project, corporate giant Reliance Industries is believed to be in talks with IL&FS and a couple of other players for part-sale of its stake.

The discussions are being held with infrastructure development and finance major IL&FS as also with some other potential partners for sale of a minority strategic stake by RIL in Reliance Haryana SEZ Ltd, sources said.

However, it could not be ascertained how much stake RIL could offload in the venture and what was the valuation it was looking at for the stake sale, sources said, adding that the talks were still in preliminary stages.

In its annual report for 2008-09, RIL had said that it was planning to bring in a strategic business partner in its Haryana SEZ project to maximise investment potential in the joint venture unit.

The SEZ was to originally come up on 10,000 hectares at an investment of over Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion), but the size was scaled down to 5,000 hectares after the government put a cap on land acquisition for such projects.

RIL and the Haryana government had entered into a deal in 2006 for setting up the multi-product SEZ, at that time billed as India's largest and expected to attract about Rs 100,000 crore (Rs 1,000 billion) of third-party investments.

At that time, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani had said that the JV company would be listed on the bourses.