Privatisation grounded

Airport investment terms need to be made more attractive

India’s key regional airports are bursting at the seams and yet the scheme to partially privatise them has received a tepid response. This paradoxical situation is the result of a poorly designed tender process. The principal sticking point is the limited scope of privatisation. Under the scheme, announced as far back as 2013, revenue generation for a private participant is restricted only to terminal operations. It is no surprise, then, that the tenders for the Ahmedabad and Jaipur airports closed on October 20 without a single bid.  This even though the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had relaxed many guidelines