The Ministry of Civil Aviation will soon float request for qualification (RFQ) document for six airports, including the recently refurbished Chennai and Kolkata airports, and is open to offering 100 per cent stake to private players.
Highly placed sources in the Aviation Ministry said the RFQ for Kolkata and Chennai airports along with four others — Guwahati, Jodhpur, Ahmedabad and Kolkata — would also be issued in the next few weeks.
“These airports would be given on a concessional basis to private parties for a period of 30 years and the Airport Authority of India (AAI) may not have equity participation as we are open to giving 100 per cent stake to private parties,” sources in the Ministry said.
Sources said the AAI, during the 30-year period, will continue to get revenue share, which will be decided on the basis of discussions held with the prospective bidders. To a question as to why AAI, which had put in thousands of crores to modernise these airports, would not have any stake participation, sources said even in the existing private airports, AAI does not have any say in operation and management therefore it was felt not to go in for equity stake.
AAI has a 26 per cent share in the private airports of Delhi and Mumbai and a 13 per cent share in Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Once finalised by the government, RFQ would be issued by the Key Infrastructure Development (KID) Cell of AAI. After RFQ, which is a response-seeking process to help identify the participants for the bidding, request for interest (RFI) would be issued. RFQ would include the broad parameters of the privatisation process. AAI had modernised the Kolkata and Chennai airports at a cost of Rs.2,325 crore and Rs.2,015 crore respectively.
