The government is eyeing around $1 billion from the sale of national carrier Air India in the next financial year, a government official said.The government will initiate the process of strategic disinvestment of Air India in the second half of 2019-20 and in between it would work towards selling some of its subsidiaries and monetise assets.

“We are eyeing $1 billion from the sale of Air India,” the official said.After a botched attempt to sell Air India in May last year, the Jaitley-led panel in June decided to scrap the stake sale plan for the time being. It was decided to infuse more funds into the carrier and cut down debt by raising resources by selling land assets and other subsidiaries.

The government had initially planned to offload 76% equity share capital of the national carrier and transfer the management control to private players. The buyer was required to take over Rs 24,000-crore debt of the carrier along with over Rs 8,000 crore of liabilities.However, the stake sale failed to attract any bidders when the bidding process completed on May 31.