Biggies eye airport area development

New Delhi: The biggest names of Indian industry have evinced keen interest in the aviation ministry's move to develop city sides of 35 non-metro airports the PPP way. Players like L&T, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Lanco, GMR, GVK and Satyam Finance are among those that have shown interest in the Amritsar and Udaipur airports that are first off the block. The government is appointing a financial consultant to find out the real estate potential of these places and what revenue they should expect from chosen partners.
City side development basically has four main components. Successful bidders will be responsible for commercial exploitation of airport area by developing facilities like hotels and conference centres. The logic is that business travellers fly to a city, hold their meetings at the airport and then return, a common practice abroad.
The other components private players will be responsible for are — running parking lots; commercial space within the terminal and also for housekeeping of terminals. While PPP in cityside development is being stiffly opposed in certain quarters of Airports Authority of India (AAI), the government took this decision as it felt the AAI was not able to tap commercial potential of airports.
08/11/07 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Nov 2007, New Nov 2007