Cabinet nod likely in July 2019 for handing over 6 airports to Adani Enterprises Ltd.
Adani Enterprises Ltd. (AEL), the flagship entity of the Adani Group, which had earlier won contracts for handling 6 airports across India, may get the approval from Cabinet of Ministers in July 2019.
AEL bagged the contracts after making successful bids in 2018. The projects were awarded to AEL during the end of first term of Narendra Modi Government. At that time, Cabinet of Ministers could not take up the matter as its tenure was getting over and General Elections were around the corner.
The 6 airports include Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in Lucknow, Jaipur International Airport in Jaipur, Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Guwahati, Trivandrum International Airport in Thiruvananthapuram and Mangalore International Airport in Mangalore.
These airports are currently being run by Airports Authority of India (AAI). The contracts have been awarded for a period of 50 years. AAI will earn Rs. 1,300 crores annually from the privatisation of the 6 airports. As per the agreement, the revenue per passenger will be paid to AAI every month. Besides, the employees at the 6 airports will have the option of joining AEL or staying with the State-owned organisation.
The Chairman of AAI – G.P. Mohapatra said, “The privatisation of these six airports, while freeing us from managing these, will give us considerable revenues, which we can put into the development of smaller airports in the country, which would not get any interest from private parties. The development of these smaller airports will be instrumental in giving a push to India’s aviation growth.”
Last year in November, the Government of India cleared a proposal for managing six AAI-run airports on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) basis and received 32 technical bids from 10 companies. This was Government’s first airport privatisation bid in the past 13 years after the GMR and GVK Groups won the bid to manage Delhi and Mumbai airports in 2006, respectively. The privatisation was steered by the then Aviation Minster – Praful Patel.
For the records, Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It was founded by Gautam Adani in 1988 as a commodity trading business with the flagship company AEL (previously Adani Exports Limited). Gautam Adani is the chairman. The Group’s diversified businesses include energy, resources, logistics, agribusiness, real estate, financial services, defence and aerospace.
The group has annual revenue of over U.S. $ 11 billion with operations at 70 locations in 50 countries. It is India’s largest port developer and operator with 10 ports and terminals including Mundra Port, its largest. It also co-owns India’s largest edible oil brand, Fortune with Singapore based Wilmar International Ltd.
