New Delhi: The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the proposal for leasing out three airports Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram of Airports Authority of India (AAI) through Public-Private Partnership (PPP). These three airports have been leased out to Adani Enterprises for Operation, Management and Development. Adani was declared as the successful bidder in a Global Competitive Bidding conducted by the Airports Authority of India, for a period of fifty years. "These projects will bring efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector," Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a press release issued Wednesday evening.
Around a decade back Govt had leased out the Airports Authority of India's Delhi and Mumbai airports on Public-Private Partnership for Operation, Management and Development. "These PPP experiments have helped create world-class airports and helped in the delivery of efficient and quality services to the airport passengers, it has also helped AAI in enhancing its revenues and focusing on developing airports and Air Navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country" the Ministry mentioned in the press release. "Revenue received by AAI from PPP partners enabled AAI to create infrastructure facilities in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and also to upgrade their airports to international standards" it added. As a matter of fact, the PPP airports in India are consistently ranked among the top 5 in their respective categories by the Airports Council International (ACI) in terms of Airport Service Quality (ASQ).
Finding the PPP model a win-win situation the Govt decided to move ahead on leasing out of Airports proposal. "Therefore, the Government decided to lease out more airports of AAI for Operation, Management and Development under PPP through the Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC). The government also constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) to decide on any issue falling beyond the scope of PPPAC" the Ministry said. PPPAC approved the transaction documents. The entire bidding process was carried out under the supervision and directions of EGoS which comprised of representatives of NITI Aayog, Department of Expenditure and Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) of Ministry of Finance (MoF).
Airports Authority of India released Request for Proposal on December 14, 2018, through global competitive bidding wherein per passenger fee is the bidding parameter. The technical bids were opened on February 16, 2019, and the financial bids of the qualified bidders were opened on February 26 the same year.
Adani Enterprises Ltd. has won all the bids by quoting highest per passenger fee for all the three airports Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram.
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