The government's offer for sale of its residual holding in IPCL, CMC and IBP continued to get encouraging response on Friday as the petrochem and IT company's offers received cumulative bids 2.76 and 4.5 times their offer size respectively, while IBP received bids for 83 per cent of the shares on offer.

The investors placed cumulative bids for 19.86 crore (198.6 million) shares in IPCL offer against 7.18 crore (71.8 million) shares being offered for bidding, according to the latest data available with the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The CMC offer for 39.76 lakh (3.976 million) shares has received cumulative bids for 1.80 crore (18 million) shares, the data adds.

The bidding for petroleum retailer IBP continued to gather momentum and received bids for 48.07 lakh (4.807 million) shares against 57.58 lakh (5.758 million) shares on offer.