Modi government may lease out 10 airports including Varanasi, Patna, Amritsar under PPP model
Buoyed by high investor interest in privatisation of six airports recently, the civil aviation ministry could lease out a total of 10 airports, which include the ones at Varanasi, Calicut, Patna, Amritsar and Bhubaneswar, among others, under the public-private partnership (PPP) model later this year. Airports at Ranchi, Coimbatore, Trichy, Indore and Raipur are also on this list.
These facilities are currently managed by state-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI), and witnessed traffic of 1.57-4.15 million passengers in FY19. Unlike the last round, the probable list for privatisation includes loss-making airports like Indore and Raipur.
The ministry had bid out profit-making airports at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Trivandrum, Guwahati and Mangalore in February 2019 on the basis of highest per-passenger fee (PPF) offered to the AAI. The bidders got rights to operate, manage and develop airports for a period of 50 years. The PPF criteria is likely to continue as the bid parameter.
