New Delhi, Feb. 13: The government is planning to expand the list of navratnas and, if possible, announce the new names during the forthcoming budget.

The case for some 11 PSUs (see chart) has been discussed over the past six months and a final decision is likely to be taken soon. The government is also weighing the proposal of greater autonomy in investments to the boards of navratnas.

“With improved financial results and other parameters, we may look at giving some of them (PSUs) navratna status,” top officials said. The decision will be taken by an inter-ministerial committee.

To be a navratna, a PSU is benchmarked against six parameters set by the department of public enterprises. These include the ratio of manpower cost to cost of production; ratio of net profit to net worth; ratio of profit before interest and tax to turnover; earnings per share; and the performance of the PSU vis-à-vis others in its sector.

The scoring is on 100, and a PSU needs to score at least 60. The highest weight of 25 is given to the net profit to net worth ratio followed by the performance of the PSU in its sector. The parameters will be checked for three consecutive years.

The boards of navratna PSUs have greater autonomy in investments compared to others. Since a navratna tag reduces bureaucratic hassles and offers greater flexibility in operations, most profit-making PSUs hanker for this status.

The PSUs in the elite league are Bhel, BPCL, GAIL, HPCL, IOC, MTNL, NTPC, ONGC and SAIL — nine in number and hence navratnas.

The government is also keen to implement the recommendations of the high-powered committee for the empowerment of PSUs which is headed by Arjun Sengupta.

The ministries of steel and communications are among those which feel powers need to be enhanced to allow boards to take snap decisions to raise bids for takeovers and mergers.

“If one sees the way the Corus and Hutch bidding went, it is obvious that a PSU, even if it is a navratna, would never have been able to take a decision — it would have been hampered by the need to refer to its administrative ministry and the cabinet,” officials said.