AAI lines up 25 airports for leasing

New Delhi: Under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), 25 AAI (Airport Authority of India) airports have been earmarked for leasing till 2025 with the help of private-sector investment and participation.

The leasing of the airports began in 2022. These airports include Trichy, Coimbatore, Madurai & Chennai in Tamil Nadu; Bhubaneswar in Odisha; Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh; Amritsar in Punjab; Indore & Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh; Raipur in Chhattisgarh; Calicut in Kerala; Nagpur in Maharashtra; Patna in Bihar; Surat & Vadodara in Gujarat; Ranchi in Jharkhand; Jodhpur & Udaipur in Rajasthan; Vijayawada, Tirupati & Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh; Hubli in Karnataka; Imphal in Manipur; Agartala in Tripura and Dehradun in Uttarakhand. The Ministry of Civil Aviation in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on Monday said that as per the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy 2017, 100 per cent FDI in Civil Aviation sector is permissible subject to certain conditions as mentioned in the policy.

The Ministry informed that upgradation and modernisation of airports' infrastructure is a continuous process and is undertaken by Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other Airport Developers from time to time depending on the availability of land, commercial viability, socio-economic considerations, traffic demand or willingness of airlines to operate to/from such airports. AAI and other Airport Developers have targeted capital outlay of approximately Rs98,000 crore in the airport sector in the next five years for expansion and modification of existing terminals, new terminals and strengthening of runways, among other activities, said the reply.