 "Ahmedabad airport privatisation may face further delay")
Earlier in January, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) employees’ union had sought a stay on the privatisation process from the Madras HC which was later vacated.
“The stay was vacated by the Madras High Court, allowing us to go ahead with the privatisation process. However, while the RFQs are still coming in, we have prepared and sent a concessional agreement to the Ministry of Civil Aviation for approval. This is likely to take some time. We don’t think the bidding process would begin anytime soon before the elections,” said a top AAI official.
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The Ministry of Civil Aviation had put up six airports including the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (SVP) International Airport in Ahmedabad along with five other airports including Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur and Guwahati for privatisation through a public private partnership (PPP) mode and had invited request for qualification (RFQs) from interested private parties in mid January 2014.
It needs to be mentioned here that several major players such as Adani, GMR, GVK, Essel Infra Projects, IRB, Essar and Sadbhav Engineering, among others have submitted RFQs and visited the airports for the privatisation bids. Once the RFQs and the concessional agreement are approved, the process will be followed by request for interest (RFIs) and request for proposals (RFPs) wherein the qualified players will be able to bid for the airports’ privatisation.
According to AAI officials at SVP International Airport in Ahmedabad, representatives of over 16 interested players including Adani, GMR and GVK have visited the airport as part of the RFQs placed by them. Members of the AAI employee union stated that while on one hand the union is protesting against privatisation of the airport, it is also demanding wage norms as per the government’s pay commission if the privatisation takes place despite protests.
“We don’t understand why the central government is privatising Ahmedabad airport since it is one of the few profit making as well as the second largest airport after Mumbai in the western region. However, since the privatisation is inevitable, we are trying to make our demands clear,” a senior AAI official at the SVP airport had told Business Standard earlier. Moreover, apart from compensation packages of Pay Commission standards, the employees are also demanding retention policies.
The SVP International Airport in Ahmedabad earns a Rs 100 crore profit annually with almost 100 domestic and international flights running daily from here.