I sympathise with the stakeholders! Its outrageous how the Board of a 'Navratna' PSU took (or rather had to take) such an invt decision. Seems like the Govt needs to set its house in order first before targeting promoters who allegedly misuse funds from their companies.
This story is completely bullshit. The reporter is not competent at all to judge who is playing mischief or is it genuine. There are billions and billions worth of deals the government does every year. And in a country like india all of them are smaked with suspision.
No investments in bonds of any corporation in the world in safe. Any corporate can burst overnight. Enron, Barring Bank are just one or two examples of MNCs which have defaulted. Any bonds which carry a government repayments guarantee is the best and safest bet. None of the state governments have money in their coffers, but they have to evntually honour their gaurantees. Does your reporter know of any case where the government has given a guarantee and defaulted.
I feel there is nothing wrong in this investment. We all know that ratings from ICRA have no meaning at all. What happened in so many cases where icra had given high rating and the promoters just vanished over night. Does you reporter know about CRB group or similar companies.
MTNL as somebody said has minted money out of delhi and mumbai over the past decade and it is but a good gesture it it has invested in a state corporation.
Just today MIT got out of Media LAB Asia since they did not like no nonsense and honest minister Shourie. They were used to Mr. Mahajan's style. The corruption has gone so deep in the system that the official Govt machinery is used now to do the dubious deals.
Unless the kickbacks are paid , i dont see any problem with MTNL investing in MKVDC. Most of the revenue of MTNL comes from Mumbai ( Capital of Maharashtra ) then whts the problem if the same money is invested for the benefit of Rural Maharashtra.
Here only issue to be checked is whether Money is being used for intended purpose and not reaching to the politicians.
