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New Delhi, January 31 At least 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI)- run airports have been earmarked for asset monetization between 2022 and 2025 while the aviation sector has started to “rebound” from Covid-led disruptions, the Economic Survey 2021-22 said.
These 25 airports selected under the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP) include Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.
In order to reduce the government interference, encourage greater investment and improve services, six airports namely, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru have been handed over to Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) – which emerged the highest bidder — for operations, management and development under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode for a lease period of 50 years.
Earlier, the Delhi and Mumbai airports were leased out under PPP mode for 30 years, the Economic Survey 2021-22 noted.
Monetisation criterion for airports include airports having annual traffic above 0.4 million passengers (in 2019 and 2020) and airports with sizeable ongoing / proposed capex plan as per the National Infrastructure Pipeline.
Aviation sector rebound
According to the Survey,India’s aviation sector is on the path of gradual recovery from “turbulence caused by COVID-19”. With the accelerated pace of vaccine roll-out and easing of travel restrictions globally, Indian aviation sector has started to rebound.
Despite the travel restrictions, total passengers carried in October, 2021 reached 99.58 lakh which was near 68 percent of the pre-Covid levels (146.25 lakh), it said.
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CIAL retain its position as the 3rd busiest airport in the country in 2021
Management attributes growth to pro-active measures to woo airlinesThe Centre took various initiatives to boost the aviation sector which included calibrated opening of the domestic sector as the first wave of the pandemic ebbed, introduction of air transport bubbles or air travel arrangements with specific countries, disinvestment of Air India, privatization and modernization /expansion of airports, boost to the regional connectivity scheme - UDAN, incentivization of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MROs) operations etc.
Four years after launching UDAN, India now has 153 Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)airports including 12 water aerodromes and 36 Helipads. Before the launch of UDAN, India had 74 airports.
In the last four years after commencement of the scheme, 948 valid awarded routes have been allotted to various airlines and out of which 389 RCS routes connecting “62 unserved and under-served airports - including 6 heliports & 02 water aerodromes - have been operationalised”.
According to the Survey, “domestic traffic in India has more than doubled from around 61 million in 2013-14 to around 137 million in 2019-20, registering a growth of over 14 percent per annum”.
Cargo operations
Besides growing month-on-month, air cargo operations are already “performing strongly with the resurrection of the economy”, supported by a robust rebound in business confidence, and boosted by resilient domestic demand, including through e-commerce.
The total air cargo tonnage carried in October 2021 reached 2.88 lakh tonne which surpassed the pre Covid level (2.81 lakh tonne).
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