City-side revamp of non-metro airports to take off in 2 months

NEW DELHI: The government is planning to invite bids in the next two months from private parties to modernise city-side of 10 non-metro airports. These modernisation projects shall be offered in bunches of 5-6 airports to the private players.

“We will come up with proposals on 10 non-metro airports in the next 45 to 60 days on which the parties can respond,” civil aviation secretary Ashok Chawla said at Confederation of Indian Industry’s India Aviation Forum on Friday.

While the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will take up the task of modernising the ‘air-side’ of these airports, private companies shall be roped in to develop the city-side. Investment in runways, parking bays and technical facilities would cost Rs 5,500 crore while the city-side amenities would attract investment of Rs 1,500 crore.

The secretary said the Infrastructure Committee of the Planning Commission was working on a model concession agreement for development of airports through the public-private partnership (PPP) model. The government has divided the 35 non-metro airports into five groups.

According to industry sources among the cities that are on top of the list for development of non-aero side are Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Guwahati, Jaipur, Udaipur, Trivandrum, Lucknow, Madhurai, Mangalore and Goa. The government plans to complete the upgrade of non-metro airports within the next three years. Sources said the government is likely to give priority to development of those non-metro airports that are first experiencing rapid traffic growth.

International status to airports such as Amritsar, Goa, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad have helped accelerate traffic growth. On the proposal to impose 3% import duty on aircraft, Mr Chawla said the total taxes on aircraft import would now be about 25% as the other taxes were 3% education cess, 3% special duty and 16% countervailing duty.

The proposal on imposing the import duty “took the industry as well as us in the ministry by surprise”, he said, adding that the civil aviation ministry would soon move the finance ministry to “do away with the countervailing duty as there is no case for it”. He had earlier said the duty was imposed to prevent import of goods adversely affecting domestic production, but aircraft are only imported as they are not produced in India.

On the proposal to hike peak-time operation charges in key airports to decongest the airspace, the secretary said: “We will come to some optimum arrangement in a few days. We will have another meeting in the next few days”.

“We have to find ways and means to decongest the airports during peak time and have to find ways to do it. One of them is financial,” he said. Mr Chawla heads a committee, which has made some recommendations including hiking airport and navigation charges during peak hours over Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore airports.