India Plans To Privatise 10 More Airports In Second Phase
India plans to privatise 10 more airports after successful bidding for six.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation is now considering to privatise 10 more airports in the second phase of the public private partnership model, according to a senior government official.
The ministry plans to lease out airports including Calicut, Coimbtare, Varanasi, Srinagar, Amritsar, Mangaluru, Port Blair, Trichy, Imphal and Vijayawada, the official told BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity. Discussions are on to include Ranchi, Raipur and Indore as they also receive heavy traffic, the official said, adding that 10 airports are yet to be selected.
These are the airports that carried one crore to 2.2 crore passengers in FY19, according to data available with the Airports Authority of India.
The Adani group was the highest bidders for the six state-run airports—Jaipur, Lucknow, Trivandrum, Mangaluru, Guwahati and Ahmedabad—that the government planned to privatise in the first phase. Other bidders included Zurich Airport International, AMP capital, GMR among others. The selected bidder will have to operate, develop and manage the airports for 50 years.
Adani received the cabinet approval to operate the Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru airports. The bids for the remaining three are yet to be approved.