As a result, the final agreement for the financial closure of the $245 million project is not likely to be signed by the end of July.
The board of the Bangalore International Airport Ltd reviewed the project last week and conveyed to the lawyers of the ministry that the concessional agreement was just not applicable to a greenfield project.
It may be noted that the Ministry of Finance was never part of the project when the tenders were called for the construction of this airport.
Having recently come into the picture, the ministry is insisting on extending the concession agreement, which is applicable to the existing airports in the country that are being privatised.
The levy of concession fee is being sought only now and was never in the original tender document when the consortium was selected and BIAL was formed.
The concession agreement involves payment in the form of an upfront fee or a percentage of the revenue generated from the airport operations like air traffic, landing rights and aircraft parking charges from domestic and international airlines, passenger fee, customs tariffs, cargo and other services.
As it would now impact the business plans, the consortium feels that the matter could only be solved by taking it to the ministerial level.
