The Government of India in the past three years had accorded in principle approval for setting up the two Greenfield Airports across the country, Jewar in Uttar Pradesh in 2018, and Hollongi in Arunachal Pradesh in 2019.
On October 21, 2016, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had launched a Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)-UDAN (UdeDeshkaAamNagrik), for stimulating regional air connectivity. Any airport which was included in the awarded routes of the RCS-UDAN and required upgradation or development for the commencement of RCS operations had been developed under the Revival of unserved and underserved airports scheme. On July 20, the 59 airports had included 2 water aerodromes and 5 heliports had been revived under the scheme.
In the past five years, the Government or AAI had spent over Rs 17784 crore in renovating airports.
Recently, the AAI had awarded six ariports for the Operations, Management and Development under thr PPP for a period of 5 decades, the airports are namely Lucknow in UP, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Guwahati in Assam, Mangaluru in Karnataka, and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.
As an upfront payment, the AAI would get back their investments in the six above mentioned airports to the tune of Rs 2299 crore. The AAI would also receive Per Passenger Fee indexed to the Consumer Price Index, from the PPP partner. The AAI would be receiving more than the net benefits that it would have initially received if they operated the six airports on their own, as post the PPP, the estimated net benefits accumulating to the AAI would be more. During the lease period, the AAI is not required to incur any OPEX or CAPEX at the six PPP operated airports.
Dr VK Singh, General, Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, had mentioned these information in a written reply to Dr L Hanumanthaiahin, at Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
