No Noida Airport for now

The move to set up an international airport in Noida disrupts not just the business plan of the Delhi International Airport (DIAL) but also the entire model of creating infrastructure through public-private partnership (PPP). As it is, the PPP model has come under strain with the private partners wrangling concessions not envisaged in the contract. Now, if the government also starts acting in bad faith towards PPP contracts, the model would lose all credibility and the government would struggle to fill India’s huge infrastructure deficit.
A new airport at Noida would summarily affect the viability and development of the nearby Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), India’s key PPP project. Now, it cannot be gainsaid that at some point in the future, as traffic volumes increase, the National Capital Region would need a second gateway, perhaps a third. But planning for multiple airports calls for multi-year studies and projections, not policy pussyfooting in an apparent move to placate a regional political heavyweight.
There have been clear cases of winning bidders in PPP projects tweaking the rules to their advantage. Which is why it is doubly unbecoming of the Centre to be similarly accused of changing the norms, post-bidding . It surely needs to desist the move, promptly.
07/05/10 Economic Times

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Categories: Airports May 2010, New May 2010