Modi government to privatize 25 airports by 2025
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New Delhi, Feb 15: The Central government plans to privatize a total of 25 airports between 2022 to 2025 under the National Monetization Pipeline, Minister of State for Civil Aviation VK Singh said in a reply in the Lok Sabha on December 9.
As a part of the government's plans for asset monetization, the 25 airports selected by the government are located in Nagpur, Varanasi, Dehradun, Trichy, Indore, Chennai, Calicut, Coimbatore, Bhubaneshwar, Patna, the minister said in his response to the lower house.
The government also plans to privatize airports in Madurai, Tirupati, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Raipur, Rajahmundry, Vadodara, Amritsar, Surat, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Bhopal, and Vijayawada. The minister said that the airports had been selected after looking at their annual traffic trends and all airports having annual traffic of above 0.4 million passengers have been selected for privatization. Former Airports Authority of India Chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra announced in 2019 that the government planned to privatize 20-25 more airports in the next phase of asset monetization with an expectation that there will be significant participation by foreign airports. Earlier in 2021, the Centre said it was planning to raise Rs 20,782 crore within four years by monetizing 25 airports across the country. Singh in his response also said that 133 of the 136 airports in the country suffered massive losses due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-21. Earnings data for 136 airports in India showed that they collectively posted losses of Rs 2,882.74 crore in 2020-21, widening from a loss of Rs 80.18 crore in 2019-20 and a loss of Rs 465.91 crore in 2018-19 and reflecting the impact of the pandemic. All airports in India except those located at Kandala, Kanpur Chakeri, Bareilly, and Porbandar reported huge losses in 2020-21, the minister said in his response. While Kanpur Chakeri airport was the most profitable airport in India reporting a profit of Rs 6.07 crore, the other three profitable airports in Porbandar, Bareilly, and Kandala reported a profit of Rs 1.54 crore, Rs 0.68 crore, and Rs 0.11 crore, respectively.
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Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport was the worst performer with a loss of Rs 384.81 crore in FY21, the data showed. Adani Airport Holdings holds a 74 percent stake in the airport and the AAI has 26 percent. New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport posted a loss of Rs 317.41 crore. The Mumbai and Delhi airports were the hardest hit by the pandemic since they were the busiest in terms of international traffic, which is yet to resume on a regular basis. Chennai, Trivandrum, and Ahmedabad completed the top five lossmaking airports last year. The financial year that started on April 1, 2020, began in the middle of the nationwide lockdown that was in force to curb the spread of COVID-19.