New Delhi: Write off Air India’s massive loans and give the Maharaja five years to revive itself. The parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture has recommended this step given the airline’s past of coming to the rescue of evacuating Indians from war zones across the world and coming to rescue during natural calamities in the country. AI has aircraft purchase and working loan of over Rs 50,000 crore and is unable to service the same due to acute financial crisis.
Interestingly, the ruling NDA members of the parliamentary committee who had stalled the draft report that recommended “against disinvestment” of Air India at its meeting January 2018, as they favoured disinvestment, have now had to pass the report suggesting AI should not be disinvested now.
The government, on its part, feels AI divestment should take place once the airline is in a better shape and overall cost environment of all airlines — oil prices and rupee exchange rate — improves. They now realise the Maharaja can find some buyers only if it is in a better shape and also comes with a lesser debt. In the recently failed divestment, bidders for the airline arm — AI, AI Express and AI-SATS (airport service company) — were expected to take over debt of Rs 24,576 crore and current liabilities of Rs 8,816 crore or a total burden of Rs 33,392 crore out of the airline’s total debt.
06/09/18 Mohua Chatterjee/Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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Interestingly, the ruling NDA members of the parliamentary committee who had stalled the draft report that recommended “against disinvestment” of Air India at its meeting January 2018, as they favoured disinvestment, have now had to pass the report suggesting AI should not be disinvested now.
The government, on its part, feels AI divestment should take place once the airline is in a better shape and overall cost environment of all airlines — oil prices and rupee exchange rate — improves. They now realise the Maharaja can find some buyers only if it is in a better shape and also comes with a lesser debt. In the recently failed divestment, bidders for the airline arm — AI, AI Express and AI-SATS (airport service company) — were expected to take over debt of Rs 24,576 crore and current liabilities of Rs 8,816 crore or a total burden of Rs 33,392 crore out of the airline’s total debt.
06/09/18 Mohua Chatterjee/Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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