Cabinet approves leasing out 3 airports through PPP including Guwahati to Adani Enterprises

August 19: The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on Wednesday has approved the proposal for leasing out three airports namely Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports of Airports Authority of India (AAI) through Public Private Partnership (PPP). The lease would be given for a period of 50 years.

“The Union Cabinet accorded its approval for leasing of three AAI airports namely, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram for Operation, Management and Development to M/s Adani Enterprises Ltd, who is declared as the successful bidder in a Global Competitive Bidding conducted by the Airports Authority of India, for a period of fifty years,” a Cabinet statement said.

Javadekar said AAI is expected to receive more than Rs 1,000 crore as upfront payment from Adani Enterprises and the amount could be used to develop airports in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and also to upgrade the same to international standards. The Modi government plans to privatise 30-35 airports over the next five years. In the second round of airport auctions, AAI has decided to lease out the airports at Varanasi, Bhubaneshwar, Amritsar, Indore, Raipur and Trichy to private partners. The government had already leased out airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Mumbai to private partners.

Airports Authority of India released Request for Proposal on 14.12.2018 through global competitive bidding wherein per passenger fee is the bidding parameter. The technical bids were opened on 16.02.2019 and the financial bids of the qualified bidders were opened on 25.02.2019/ 26.02.2019. M/s Adani Enterprises Ltd. has won all the bids by quoting highest per passenger fee for all the three airports i.e. Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram.

I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar said, “These projects will bring efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector.” He also said that the PPP airports in India are consistently ranked among the top 5 in their respective categories by the Airports Council International (ACI) in terms of Airport Service Quality (ASQ).