Adani wins Guwahati, Jaipur & Thiruvananthapuram airport for 50 years

The Union Cabinet accorded its approval for leasing of the three AAI airports for 'Operation, Management and Development' to M/s Adani Enterprises Ltd, that has been declared as the successful bidder in a 'Global Competitive Bidding' conducted by the Airports Authority of India, for a period of 50 years.

These projects are aimed at bringing efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector.

BACKGROUND: The government had leased out the AAI's airports at Delhi and Mumbai on the PPP mode for 'Operation, Management and Development' about a decade ago.

While 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 the AAI in enhancing its revenues and focusing on developing airports and Air Navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country.

Revenue received by the AAI from the PPP partners enabled the AAI to create infrastructure facilities in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and also to upgrade their airports to international standards. The PPP airports in India are consistently ranked among the top five in their respective categories by the Airports Council International (ACI) in terms of Airport Service Quality (ASQ).

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 PPPAC approved the transaction documents. The entire bidding process was carried out under the supervision and directions of EGoS which comprised representatives of the NITI Aayog, Department of Expenditure and Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) of Ministry of Finance (MoF).

The AAI released the '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 25, 2019/ February 26, 2019. M/s Adani Enterprises Ltd. has won all the bids by quoting the highest per passenger fee for all the three airports i.e., Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvanathapuram. (PIB)

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