Six more airports to be privatised soon

 Six more airports in the country will soon be handed over to private parties for its operation and management on the lines of airports in Delhi and Bangalore.

The government has already set in motion a process to allow private parties to acquire stakes in airports in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode. Chennai and Lucknow airports will be considered first under the proposal.

Besides Delhi and Bangalore, two more airports in Mumbai and Hyderabad are already with private parties.

Initiating the process of transferring control of airports to private consortiums, the Civil Aviation Ministry has issued Request for Qualification (RFQ) for the two airports in Chennai and Lucknow.

Interested parties can submit their RFQs till mid-October while financial bids are likely to be received by mid December, a Civil Aviation Ministry statement has said. The authority expects to short-list upto seven pre-qualified applicants for participation in the financial bid stage.

The other airports considered for privatisation are Kolkata, Guwahati, Jaipur and Ahmedabad, which would be taken up for operation, management and development on the PPP model soon.

The decision to invite private parties for operating these airports was taken after a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Group.

Ministry officials said a private company or consortium could acquire 100 per cent equity stake in Chennai and Lucknow airports. The condition is that the applicant should include a provision for issue of “a golden share” to Airports Authority of India (AAI) so that it can be on the Board of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) formed to run the airport.

The concessionaire can levy tariffs for aeronautical services including the User Development Fee (UDF) as may be determined by Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) to start with. Such charges would be revised normally once every five years by the AERA.