New Delhi, June 16 :    New Delhi, June 16:  The core group on disinvestment has decided to sell IPCL as one whole unit to a strategic buyer if the differences between the petrochemicals major and Indian Oil Ltd over the pricing of the former's Vadodara complex are not resolved. Indian Oil, which has been asked by the Centre to buy IPCL's Vadodara complex, does not wish to pay the steep price of Rs 1,300 crore that IPCL is demanding. To resolve the issue, the core committee has set up an inter-ministerial group. However, it has ruled that if no solution is found, then IPCL should be sold as a single company. The Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD) had taken the decision to hive off IPCL's Vadodara complex to IOC on November 19. Since then, the two sides have been negotiating on the transfer price without success. IPCL, in fact, had communicated to all stock exchanges on the decision to hive off the Vadodara plant. IPCL, which had engaged Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, to value assets of the entire corporation including the Vadodara complex, feels pricing it at anything less than Rs 1,300 crore would be a steal. Officials said IPCL had adopted several methods to value its plant and one method even priced it at over Rs 2,000 crore. The sale of the Vadodara complex was to have been minus certain common facilities including the 180-km Dahej-Vadodara pipeline for carrying naphtha, ethylene and propylene, the Rs 80-crore captive jetty at Dahej and a 42 per cent stake in the recently commissioned Rs 830-crore liquid chemical port. But the core group has decided once the Vadodara issue is settled, the government should go ahead with bids for the 25 per cent strategic stake in IPCL which it wants to hawk. The government has already appointed foreign investment banker Warburg Dillon Read as the consultant for privatisation of the corporation. The government currently holds a nearly 60 per cent stake in IPCL. With this sale, the government's holding will come down to nearly 35 per cent and management control will switch to the new strategic partner. Reliance and the Chatterjee-Soros Group had earlier been shortlisted as possible buyers of IPCL, but might be asked to bid once again if they remain interested. Minus the Vadodara unit, which is the oldest of IPCL's three plants, IPCL was expected to be a very attractive buy, especially as its reserves would be bolstered by the money IOC would have paid up for the complex. Because of this, many critics had complained IOC was being 'burdened' with the Vadodara unit to help out the corporate group which eventually manages to buy IPCL. Besides the Vadodara complex, IPCL has two plants - Nagothane gas cracker unit in Maharashtra and the Gandhar unit in Gujarat. Other stakeholders in IPCL include financial institutions who hold 21 per cent, small shareholders (nearly 11 per cent), employees (half a per cent), and GDR holders (just over 7 per cent). The company has reported a turnover of over crossed Rs 5,000-crore in 2000-2001 and a gross profit of about Rs 1,150 crore.