With the Left parties out of government’s hair, one would have thought greater private sector participation in airport infrastructure would become the order of the day.
Civil aviation minister says it would be a good experience for the Airports Authority to compete with world class airports at Delhi and Mumbai
NEW DELHI: With the Left parties out of government’s hair, one would have thought greater private sector participation in airport infrastructure would become the order of the day. But after several flip-flops, the civil aviation ministry has decided to allow the state-run Airports Authority of India greater play in greenfield and even non-metro airport development.
The ministry has decided therefore to restrict private participation to just the non-aeronautical works for the two non-metro airports proposed at Amritsar and Udaipur. Even the modernisation and development of the two big metro airports at Chennai and Kolkata will be done entirely by the AAI. This is contrary to the thinking which allowed airport development at Mumbai and Delhi through the public private partnership (PPP) model.
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel asserted on Thursday that the terminal building at Amritsar and Udaipur would be developed solely by the AAI and PPP would be used only for non-aeronautical works. He also said that the pre-qualified bidders already shortlisted for these two projects will continue to remain valid.
However, as per the terms on which the bids were called, the successful bidder was to be responsible for commercial operation and maintenance of the terminal building and development and operation of cargo related facilities besides the city side development.
So now that the ground rules have changed, the bids will perhaps have to be called again.
Patel said it would be a “good experience for the AAI to compete with existing world class airports at Delhi and Mumbai and build new ones at the two non-metro locations”. He said that initially, the funding for Chennai and Kolkata would be done through AAI’s internal accruals but the AAI may look for external borrowing at a later date.
Some of the top infrastructure developers are in the race for modernising Udaipur and Amritsar airports. Consortia led by Reliance Energy, Fraport AG, Tata-Changi, Lanco and L&T have already been short listed as pre-qualified bidders for the Amritsar leg of modernisation. For Udaipur, the consortia shortlisted are led by Reliance Energy, Tata-Changi, L&T, Maytas Infra and GMR.
Then, Kolkata and Chennai airports are already facing a six-month delay. A senior ministry official had earlier acknowledged that it was the Left parties’ insistence which had led to AAI being selected for the two metro airports. “But now, since the process is already delayed, any change in ground rules will only push it back further. Besides, it is good to have different models for developing major airports in the country since this helps introduce an element of competition among them. Delhi and Mumbai are under the PPP model, Hyderabad and Bangalore are greenfield private and we think the remaining two metro airports can be developed well by the AAI alone.”
While a new, world class airport will be ready in Kolkata by early 2011, Chennai can boast of it a little earlier in 2010. The Kolkata project will incur an investment of Rs 1,942.51 crore and will result in an additional passengers handling capacity of 20 million passengers per annum. For Chennai, the estimated cost is Rs 1,808 crore and this will result in an additional passengers handling capacity of 14 million passengers.
b_sindhu@dnaindia.net
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