Centre okays leasing out Mangalore airport

The Centre on Thursday gave “in-principle” approval for leasing out of Mangalore International Airport and five other airports for operation, management and development through public-private partnership.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here.

Besides Mangalore, the airports at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram will be leased out for operation, management and development through the PPP route.

Law & IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the PPP experiments have helped create world-class airports, helped Airports Authority of India enhance revenues and focus on building air navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country.

“Presently, the airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi are being managed under the PPP model. These PPP airports have been ranked among the top five in their respective categories by the Airports Council International (ACI) in terms of Airport Service Quality (ASQ),” Prasad said.

An official statement said that the PPP model in airport projects has brought world class infrastructure at airports, delivery of efficient and timely services to the passengers and augmenting revenue stream to the Airports Authority of India without making any investment.

Mangalore International Airport is the second busiest airport in Karnataka after Bengaluru and had handled 22 lakh passengers in 2017-18.