<div>Despite a healthy increase in revenue from the four airports – Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Jaipur – and fearing a start of any fresh protest from airport employee unions, the central government is in no mood to privatise them.</div><div> </div><div>Instead, the Civil Aviation Ministry has initiated the process of developing these four airports through public private partnership model, which is moving at a very slow pace, says a senior ministry official.</div><div> </div><div>For the record, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma has said: "There is no proposal of privatisation of these airports at present." Sharma informed the upper house of Parliament on the first day of the Monsoon session via a written reply.</div><div> </div><div>But according to the revenue figures submitted by the ministry, the Chennai airport has generated an average of 21 per cent increase in its revenue from the airports operation in the past two years. For 2013-14, Chennai airport clocked a revenue of Rs 908.32 crore, a jump of 31 per cent over the previous year. For 2014-15 (revised estimates), the airport revenue from Chennai stood at Rs 1,022.80 crore thereby showing a 12 per cent increase over FY13.</div><div> </div><div>Similarly, Kolkata airport clocked a revenue of Rs 670 crore for FY15 and Rs 630 crore for FY14. Even the airports of Ahmedabad and Jaipur have reported an increase in their respective revenue for the last two financial years.</div><div> </div><div>But the civil aviation ministry has already floated the Request for Qualification (RFQ) for these airports.</div><div> </div><div>When specifically asked whether the Airports Authority of India has opposed privatisation, the minister replied in the negative.</div><div> </div><div>But only three months ago, the unions at Kolkata airport had threatened to bring all operations to a standstill. The protest was against any move to privatise the Kolkata airport.</div><div> </div><div>When the UPA-I government had attempted to privatise the Kolkata airport on similar lines as the Delhi, Hyderabad and the Bangalore airport, the union had blocked the normal operations at the Kolkata airport.</div><div> </div><div>Under the Left Front government rule in West Bengal, the then civil aviation minister Praful Patel was forced to abandon plans for the privatisation of both Kolkata and Chennai airports. Instead, the ministry had conceded to allow the Airports Authority of India to redevelop these two airports.</div>
BW Reporters
Ashish Sinha is an experienced business journalist who has covered FMCG, auto, infrastructure, tourism, telecom among several other beats. Ashish has keen interest in the regulatory scenario impacting different sectors. He writes on aviation, railways, post and telegraph, infrastructure, defence, media & entertainment, among a wide variety of other subjects.
_20240527192124_original_image_21.webp)
