TLI Staff
New Delhi: The Ministries of Finance and Law have given their concurrence to privatization of another six Airports Authority of India (AAI)-run airports thus paving the way for bidding them out in the next few months.
The six airports proposed to be leased out on PPP basis are Varanasi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Trichy, Indore and Raipur.
The development has come amid protests from employee unions of AAI and warning by RSS-affiliate Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) earlier this month to stop strategic sale, disinvestment and privatization of PSUs.
Government sources said that the two departments of Expenditure and Economic Affairs have endorsed the PPP model under which the six airports would be leased out.
“The Law ministry and Niti Aayog have also given their comments to the draft cabinet note circulated earlier by the civil aviation ministry. The note would be finalised now and sent for cabinet approval. The process is likely to be completed by February-March,” an official source said.
The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman may mention this in her Budget speech counting it as major initiative by the government for building aviation infrastructure in the country. The other six airports for which Gujarat-based Adani Enterprises won the bid are also expected to be mentioned in the budget speech.
Meanwhile, a committee of secretaries (CoS) is working on a five-year vision for aviation sector which includes investment projections for creating new airport infrastructure to facilitate capacity expansion by airlines. A sizeable chunk of this investment would come through privatization of state-owned airports.
“The kind of aggressive bid Zurich Airport International gave for Greater Noida airport it seems there is enough appetite among private investors in the airport sector. People were earlier talking about Adani’s bid saying the group was aggressive. But in case of Greater Noida, even Adani was outbid,” another official said.
The government has indicated that it will privatize all profitable airports thus limiting the role of AAI to commercially unviable RCS (Regional Connectivity Scheme) airports.