New Delhi: The Central government’s plan to lease out as many as 13 airports, currently maintained and operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), hinges on the outcome of ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
A senior management official of Adani Enterprises Ltd said that the next round of leasing of government controlled airports to the private sector will be decided after the 2024 general elections. He said that the government may come up for a pipeline for privatization and the Adani group will bid for airports. “Maintenance and operation of airports are our core strength of the network that we want to develop,” he said in a post-earnings call with analysts.
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Officials of the AAI said that the government has proposed to lease out 13 airports operated by the AAI to private sector operators. The government has already handed over operations of airports located at Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangalore, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram to Adani Enterprises Ltd, which had emerged as the sole highest bidder for all the six airports.
The operations, management and development of the six airports is undertaken by Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, an arm of Adani Enterprises.
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“We want to ensure that we are there as a network player, which gives us a very big strength in terms of route planning, in terms of the strategy development, what we want to do. We are looking at it from a consumer perspective, so that even makes more sense from a cargo perspective, having a big network also increases our strength” the management said.
The ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) has proposed to lease out airports at Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur, and Tiruchirappalli to private players under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode for their maintenance and operations. A few loss making units will also be clubbed with the profit-making airports for the lease under PPP mode.
