Comments
Adani Enterprises Ltd has placed the highest per passenger fee for running Guwahati airport, making a clean sweep of the six non-metro airports that were put up for privatisation by the Centre.
The company quoted a per passenger fee of ₹160 when the price bids for the Guwahati airport were opened on Tuesday, helping the firm add to the five airports — Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram — for which it had emerged the highest bidder on Monday.
Impressive growth
Guwahati airport has seen a growth in both domestic and international passengers. The latest data available on the AAI website shows that there was a 23.2 per cent increase in domestic passengers passing through the airport at 4.2 million in April-December 2018, compared to 3.4 million in the previous year period. International passenger arrivals registered a 2 per cent increase at about 26,300 during the period (25,800 passengers).
“The bid results show that the number of players in the Indian airports space has expanded. So, between duopoly plus AAI, that broad-base has happened, which is quite good as far as the overall sector is concerned,” Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, Director and Practice Leader, Transport and Logistics at Crisil Infrastructure Advisory, told BusinessLine .
Significant interest would be there for any kind of brownfield asset monetisation of the government. Going forward, private capital is ready to be deployed for brownfield asset monetisation, he added.
Senior officials of the Airports Authority of India said how much monies will flow to the state-owned airport operator during the 50-year concession period as part of the concession agreement will be based on the prevailing inflation rate and projected passenger traffic growth.
Clash with polls?
Asked whether the AAI had taken the approval of the Law Ministry and the Election Commission before opening the financial bids for the six airports — as there is a possibility that the concession could be finally awarded after the dates for the Lok Sabha elections are announced and the Model Code of Conduct is in place — officials said only the government can answer that.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.