New Delhi: Setting at rest speculation of any rollback of disinvestment of cash-rich oil companies in the wake of blue-chip oil firms taking a beating in the stock market, Congress today (May 15, 2004) said it will pursue the reform policy but was against their privatisation as they were "strategic companies".

"Disinvestment, yes. Privatisation, we will have to think. You will have to make a distinction between disinvestment and privatisation," senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh, who is tipped to become Finance Minister, said after the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting which elected Sonia Gandhi as its leader.

Even Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was against privatisation of ONGC, Singh said, adding disinvestment upto 51 per cent of Government equity in oil companies was a possibility.

The oil industry was "strategic". The oil companies were also profit-making companies. If they can perform and compete against private oil companies, he wondered, why should they be privatised.

"We are not for privatisation as an ideology," he said indicating Congress would not be averse to pursuing this reform measure where privatisation and disinvestment were in the interest of the country, helped raise resources and provided more elbow room to public sector undertakings.