Bangalore: It was just about the start of a hockey-stick growth which GMR Infrastructure was poised on at Male International Airport, when it is being forced to vacate by the Maldives Government. With the Government of Maldives firm on evicting GMR Infrastructure-led consortium from managing the Maldives International Airport, the Bangalore-based company will be losing Rs 1,200 crore revenues on an annual basis, a sixth of the total revenues of Rs 7,600 crore which GMR reported for last fiscal.
The Male International Airport operations, which GMR-Malaysia Airports combine were running for the past nearly three years, reported a 2.5 times jump in net profit at Rs 83 crore for the first half of this fiscal and a 34% jump in revenues at Rs 600 crore. The operating margins too have been improving at a good pace and it doubled to 22% for the first half of Fy13 as against 11% during Fy12.
One of the key elements for the growth in revenues in this airport has been owing to high percentage of revenue inflow from fuel sales rather than revenue from passengers passing through. As much as 75% of the revenues come from fuel sales and this is one of the key reasons that GMR entered this airport as well as into another international airport in Turkey.
07/12/12 Raghuvir Badrinath/Business Standard
