Govt to club loss-making, profitable airports to woo companies

In the next round of airport privatisation, the Centre is bundling seven loss-making airports with six profit-making airports to woo companies, The Economic Times reported citing sources. The bidding for the same is likely to begin in the next financial year. 

The possibility of clubbing of profitable and non-profitable airports is being explored to make more attractive packages. 

According to the approved list, the profit-making airports are Trichy, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur and Amritsar. These will be paired with Salem, Jharusuguda, Jabalpur, Jalgaon and Kangda, respectively. So, a company's bid for Indore would be paired with Jabalpur, and so on. 

The airport in Varanasi, which is also Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, will be clubbed with Kushinagar and Gaya with all three being possibly developed as part of a religious or Buddhist tourism circuit, the report adds.

A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the core group of secretaries for asset monetisation (CGAM) held last month and attended by aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola.

The companies bidding will be responsible for construction, operation and management for a period of 50 years. The winning bid will be decided on the basis of the highest fee per passenger.

Last year, the Adani Group won all six airports that were up for bidding in 2019—Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangalore, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram.

Meanwhile, the Central government is also planning to sell its residual stake in already privatised Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports as part of the ambitious Rs 2.5 lakh crore asset monetisation pipeline identified to raise additional resources.

The AAI, which works under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, owns and manages more than 100 airports across the country.