Data | How did Central Public Sector Enterprises perform in FY2020?

Financial Year 2020, the one-year period just before the national lockdown was announced, was relatively worse for Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) in terms of profits and employment. The share of firms that earned profits reduced to a 6-year-low in FY20. More worryingly, the aggregated profit of profit-making firms decreased while the aggregated loss of loss-making firms increased. The downward spiral of consistent loss-makers such as BSNL and Air India continued, resulting in heavy job losses in the public sector. The workforce of the CPSEs reduced by two lakh in two years.

Profit and loss

Close to 66.8% of the CPSEs made profits in FY20 — the lowest share in the last five years. The graph shows the share of profit/loss-making CPSEs.

Double blow

The aggregate net profit of profit-making CPSEs reduced from ₹1.74 lakh crore in FY19 to ₹1.38 lakh crore in FY20. On the other hand, the aggregate net loss of loss-making CPSEs increased from ₹31,620 crore in FY19 to ₹44,817 crore.

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The good, bad and the ugly

The first chart plots the amount of profit* (169 CPSEs)/ loss (86) recorded by 255 CPSEs in FY20. The second chart plots the % increase (165 CPSEs) /decrease (52) in the number of employees among 217 CPSEs between FY18 and FY20.

BSNL had posted the biggest loss of ₹15.5 thousand crore while Air India’s loss stood at ₹8.5 thousand crore. On the other hand, ONGC’s profit was ₹25.3 thousand crore and NTPC’s profit was ₹19.3 thousand crore.

BSNL’s staff strength dropped from 1,83,522 employees in FY18 to 69,824 in FY20. MTNL’s staff strength dropped from 25,191 employees in FY18 to 4,182 in FY20 – a reduction of over 80%, the highest among all CPSEs.

Source: Department of Public Enterprises