A question from Yahoo! Answers:

What is disinvestment?

what do u mean by disinvestment?it’s advantages & disadvantages.the present situation of India in disinvestment.

Depends on the context.

In macroeconomics, where the term is used most often, it means negative net investment (the country as a whole continues to invest, but not enough to compensate for “capital consumption allowance”, or capital stock being decommissioned).

In business, it refers to situations when a company has more money or capital assets than it knows what to do with and decides to handle this problem by selling surplus assets and returning money to investors by paying down debt, buying back stock, or paying special dividends. Typically, these situations occur in declining industries or when restructuring conglomerates.