Cabinet approves leasing out of Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports
20 Aug 2020
The union cabinet on Wednesday approved the leasing out of three airports, namely, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram, of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) through public private partnership (PPP) to Adani Enterprises, for a period of fifty years.
A cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi accorded its approval for leasing out of the three AAI airports for operation, management and development to Adani Enterprises Ltd, who emerged the successful bidder in a global competitive bidding conducted by the AAI.
A civil aviation ministry release said this will bring efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector.
The government had leased out the Airports Authority of India's airports at Delhi and Mumbai on PPP for operation, management and development about a decade ago.
While these PPP experiments 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. 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 release noted.
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), the release added.
The government has decided to lease out more airports of AAI for under PPP through Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC). An Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) will decide on any issue falling beyond the scope of PPPAC.
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.
Airports Authority of India released request for proposal on 14 December 2018 through global competitive bidding wherein per passenger fee is the bidding parameter. The technical bids were opened on 16 February 2019 and the financial bids of the qualified bidders were opened on 25-26 February 2019.
Adani Enterprises Ltd won all the bids by quoting highest per passenger fee for all the three airports, ie, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvanathapuram.