Government plans to privatise 13 airports by March 2022

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By the end of this fiscal year, the government is planning to complete the privatisation process for 13 airports run by the state owned Airports Authority of India (AAI), The Economic Times reported on Tuesday. It also said that 13 airports which are to be bid on a PPP (Public-Private Partnership), have been sent to the aviation ministry. For the bidding process, the per-passenger revenue model would be used. Earlier, the Jewar airport in Greater Noida has been bid out on the same model and has been successful has well, it added.

It further said that despite Covid, there will be takers for this project as the impact of the pandemic will only be there for short term and airports are on offer for 50 years. AAI has decided to club bigger airports with seven smaller ones, Varnasi with Kushinagar and Gaya, Amritsar with Kangra, Bhubaneswar with Tirupati, Raipur with Aurangabad, Indore with Jabalpur, and Trichy with Hubli.

AAI to expand mandate to newer airports

In the next four years, the centre is planning to award 25 airports as part of the National Monetisation Plan (NMP). This comes on the back of the six awarded to the Adani Group in 2019 after the airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad were handed over to private operators back in 2005-06.

With the privatisation of profit-making airports, the government is planning to liberalise the aviation sector. The mandate of AAI will be expanded to develop new airports in areas where the private sector may not want to venture through profits earned through revenue share from the privatised airports.

Due to Covid, the earnings of AAI took a beating, posting a record loss of Rs 1,962 crore in FY21 and was forced to borrow Rs 1,500 crore from State Bank of India (SBI) to meet working capital requirements.