Concession agreement for pvt airports soon

The government is finalising a model concession agreement for all greenfield airport projects to be developed by private companies. The agreement will be in place in the next two weeks.

"This model is basically a transparent allocation of rights and obligations to the private developer. It will make the private party aware of the airport project before it bids for it," said a senior official in the civil aviation ministry.

The document will include broad guidelines regarding the area of land that will be used and some details regarding traffic projections for the place. While the basic framework would remain the same for all the projects, some of the details will vary depending on the project.

"Finer details like revenue sharing will, however, be worked out after the bidding process and will not be a part of the model concession agreement," said the official.

Recently, the two greenfield airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore and the brownfield project at Delhi got into major controversies due to loopholes in the concession agreements with the private developers.

There were stiff protests against the closure of the existing airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad, as stipulated in the respective concession agreements, which said that no airport would be allowed within 150 km of the new airport.

Delhi International Airport Limited, the consortium developing the Delhi airport, was mired in controversy because of allegations that it was not sharing 46 per cent of its revenues, when it took huge deposits for developing real estate projects around the Delhi airport.