Hyderabad, NFAPost: State-of-the-art airports in the country have become a proud benchmark and a landmark in development. Be it Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad or Bengaluru, sprawling airports, developed and maintained by private players, have created an impeccable first-look of the city.
With the Airports Authority of India (AAI) losing the development plot midway, the private-public partnership is the way forward. The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved the proposal for leasing out three airports – Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram – through public-private partnership (PPP).
The winning bid was by M/s Adani Enterprises and the lease will run for a period of 50 years. These projects will bring efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector.
Infrastructure development
While the PPP partnerships have helped create world class airports and helped in delivery of efficient and quality services to the airport passengers, it has also helped AAI in enhancing its revenues and focusing on developing airports and Air Navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country.
The revenue received by AAI from PPP partners enabled AAI to create infrastructure facilities in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and also to upgrade their airports to international standards. The PPP airports in India are consistently ranked among the top five in their respective categories by the Airports Council International (ACI) in terms of Airport Service Quality (ASQ).
The government decided to lease out more airports of AAI for Operation, Management and Development under PPP through Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC),” a release from the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.
The government has also constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) to decide on any issue falling beyond the scope of PPPAC.
NITI Aayog
“PPPAC approved the transaction documents. The entire bidding process was carried out under the supervision and directions of EGoS which comprised of representatives of NITI Aayog, Department of Expenditure and Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) of Ministry of Finance (MoF),” the release added.
Airports Authority of India released Request for Proposal in December 2018 through global competitive bidding wherein per passenger fee is the bidding parameter.
The technical February last year and the financial bids of the qualified bidders were opened in February last year.
