Chennai, Jan 20 (IANS): Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management (Reliance Mutual Fund) has received around Rs 12,000 crore worth of bids for the further fund offer (FFO) in Central Public Sector Enterprises Exchange Traded Fund (CPSE ETF), a top company official said on Friday.

"As of now, approximately Rs 12,000 crore worth of bids have been received and the counting is still on. The final bid amount will be higher. What is interesting is the overwhelming support from the retail investors. Over 200,000 retail investors have participated in the issue," Sundeep Sikka, ED and CEO, Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

The quantum of bids received was over two-and-half times of the base issue size of Rs 4,500 crore.

The FFO in CPSE ETF was part of the government's larger disinvestment programme announced by the Ministry of Finance.

Sikka said it was the largest disinvestment programme by the Central government using ETF and largest fund offering by any mutual fund in India till date.

The anchor investors like Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Kotak Mutual Fund, State Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India and others submitted bids of Rs 6,000 crore.

The non-anchor portion received bids of Rs 6,000 crore- two times of Rs 3,000 crore reserved in the issue-from retail and pension funds-domestic and foreign.

"From a mutual fund, this has been the largest fund offering by any mutual fund till date. We received encouraging responses especially from retail investors across the country and are confident that ETF as a category will gain momentum in future" Sikka said.

The issue opened on January 17 and closed on January 20.