AAI Has Received Rs 3,245 Crore Till February From Private Partners Of 6 Leased Out Airports

State-owned AAI has received a total amount of Rs 3,245 crore till February this year from the private partners of Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru airports, according to the government.

These airports were awarded for operations, management and development under Public Private Partnership (PPP) for a lease period of 50 years. The airports were won by the Adani group through a competitive bidding process.

"Private partners of Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru airports have paid approximately Rs 896 crore to AAI as Per Passenger Fee (PPF) till February 2023. AAI has also received an amount of approximately Rs 2,349 crore from the private partners of these six airports in the form of upfront fee towards the capital expenditure incurred by AAI at these airports," Union minister V K Singh told Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Airports at Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru were leased out in 2020 while the remaining three were leased out in 2021.

In a written reply, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation also said the fees and charges at Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur and Guwahati airports have not changed since taking over the airports by the new operator.

Tariffs have been revised at Mangaluru and Ahmedabad airports.

Singh noted that till March 16 this year, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has received an annual fee of more than Rs 13,000 crore as revenue share from the private partners of Mumbai airport.

To a query, the minister said that as of date, there is no plan to lease Kolkata airport under PPP.

In a separate written reply, Singh said AAI has received revenues of around Rs  5,500 crore from the private partner of Delhi airport and Rs 5,174 crore from Mumbai airport during the 2017-18 to 2021-22 period.

According to the minister, the Government of India (GoI) also receives four per cent of the gross revenue as concession fee from the operators of Bangalore and Hyderabad airports. "So far, GoI has received an amount of approximately Rs 620 crore as concession fee from these airport operators".

Meanwhile, Singh said that as per the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), 25 AAI airports have been earmarked for leasing over the 2022 to 2025 period, with expected proceeds of Rs 10,782 crore.

Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi and Jodhpur are among the airports.

Others are Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.

"The value of proceeds from monetisation of airports is dependent upon many factors including transaction timing, market conditions, investor appetite, transaction terms etc," the minister said.