Bhubaneswar Among Six Airports In Centre’s Pipeline For Next Round Of Privatisation

Bhubaneswar: With the general elections over, the Central government may go for privatisation of the airports including BPIA in Bhubaneswar.

According to sources, the Centre plans to undertake the leasing of 13 airports operated by the Airports Authority of India to private players. The government has already leased out six airports in the first phase and planned to go for the rest in the next round. With the government already in place, the final decision on the bidding process will be taken by the Cabinet.

In the first round of privatisation, the government handed over the operations of Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangalore, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports to Adani Enterprises Ltd.

The next round of airport privatisation underscores the growing interest and confidence in India’s aviation market among domestic and international investors. As the government continues its efforts to attract private investment in airport development, opportunities for collaboration and expansion are expected to increase, the sources said.

The management of Adani Enterprises is optimistic of the next round of airport privatisation. “I think this should happen post elections. The government may come up for a pipeline for privatisation and we will 100% bid for airports which are in our core strength of the network that we want to develop,” a report of Economic Times quoted the management of Adani Enterprises as saying.

In the upcoming round, the government plans to bring airports at Amritsar, Varanasi, Indore, Raipur, Bhubaneswar and Tiruchirapalli on private-public partnership (PPP) mode. The Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) in Bhubaneswar is a profit-making airport. The government would also hand over operations of loss-making airports which will be clubbed with those making profits.

“We want to ensure that we are there as a network player, which gives us a very big strength in terms of route planning and strategy development. We are looking at it from a consumer perspective. It also makes more sense from a cargo perspective as we have a big network,” the management of Adani Enterprises said.