The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the leasing out of six airports -- Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru -- for operation, management and development under the Public Private Partnership (PPP).
The cabinet provided "in-principle" approval for leasing out the airports under the PPP model, said an official statement.
Currently, the airports being managed under the PPP model include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Cochin.
"While these PPP experiments have helped create world class airports, it has also helped AAI (Airports Authority of India) in enhancing its revenues and focusing on developing airports and air navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country," it said.
As per the Civil Aviation Ministry statement, PPP in infrastructure projects brings efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector.
The airports will be leased-out in a revenue-sharing model where the winning bidder will have to pay a concession fee to the AAI. Concession fee is a certain percentage of the total revenue generated from the airport. The airports will be bid out through PPP for 30 years and the company that wins the bid will have a controlling stake in the airport.
The decision to lease the airports under the PPP model is expected to enhance the revenue to AAI and increase the economic development in the concerned areas in terms of job creation and related infrastructure, as per the statement.
In 2006, Delhi and Mumbai airports were privatized. And According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law and Justice, the modernization of these airports helps improve the quality and in turn the tourist flow into the cities.
As per a Business Standard report, group of secretaries from the civil aviation ministry and departments of economic affairs and expenditure, headed by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, will look over the contours of the sale.
With IANS inputs