Goyal, Mallya come to Delhi seeking bailout

New Delhi: Exactly a week after forging a surprise alliance, Jet Airways and Kingfisher chiefs Naresh Goyal and Vijay Mallya were courting the corridors of power in Delhi.
While Mallya, a former MP, went to Parliament where he rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty, Goyal called on finance minister P Chidambaram to seek tax relief for airlines and also met his reinstated employees here.
Emerging from Parliament, Mallya indicated that more job cuts and layoffs could take place in the sector if its fortunes did not change fast enough.
While Mallya was at Parliament, Goyal is learnt to have met finance minister P Chidambaram at the latter's North Block office. He took up the issue of base price of jet fuel and high taxes on it. The combined impact of these two factors have made India one of the most expensive places in the world to buy ATF. Coupled with fuel prices, airlines' overcapacity led to losses to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore last fiscal and the figure could double this time.
According to sources, since several key politicians came rushing in to take credit for Jet reinstating all its 1,900 sacked employees, Goyal is now looking for some early relief. The Cabinet Secretary-headed panel appointed by the PM to look into the woes of the aviation sector will meet in first week of November.
From Wednesday, the aviation ministry will have one-on-one meetings with all airlines to individually know their problems and how they are surviving these tough times.
21/10/08 Times of India

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Categories: Jet Airways Oct 2008, Kingfisher Oct 2008