AAI may shelve work on 7 airports

New Delhi: State-run Airports Authority of India (AAI), which owns and runs most of the country’s commercial airports, plans to shelve the modernization of at least seven of the 35 non-metro airports it had planned to upgrade. The move follows a reduction in revenue caused by airlines slashing the number of flights to stem mounting losses.
The shortfall in spending planned for the airport upgrade, together with expenditure earmarked for the modernization work underway at Chennai and Kolkata airports, is estimated at around Rs5,000 crore.
At the peak of the air traffic boom in the country in 2006, AAI had planned to spend at least Rs6,440 crore by 2011-12 for modernization of the 35 airports.
Over the last fiscal, passenger traffic dwindled as the pace of economic growth slowed in the face of a global recession. It dropped 4.8% in 2008 alone from the previous year.
“We have reviewed the curtailment of some ongoing airports projects and also (plan to) introduce several cost-cutting measures,” said an AAI board member, who didn’t want to be named.
The steps it proposes to take to tackle the shortfall in modernization costs include seeking government approval to raise Rs5,000 crore from a sale of tax-free bonds, increasing commercial development of airport properties, recovering dues from airlines and oil companies, besides in-house steps such as economy air travel for employees.
Non-metro airports that were being modernized included Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Guwahati, Jaipur, Udaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Lucknow, Goa, Madurai, Mangalore, Agatti, Aurangabad, Khajuraho, Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhopal, Indore, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Tiruchirappalli, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Patna, Port Blair, Varanasi, Agartala, Dehradun, Imphal, Ranchi, Raipur, Agra, Chandigarh, Dimapur, Jammu and Pune.
A second AAI official, who also didn’t want to be named, said work on at least 30% of these airports has been commissioned.
09/07/09 Tarun Shukla/Livemint

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Categories: Airports Jul 2009