New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the leasing out of six airports — Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru — for operation, management and development under the Public Private Partnership (PPP). The cabinet provided “in-principle” approval for leasing out the airports under the PPP model, said an official statement.
Currently, the airports being managed under the PPP model include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Cochin. “While these PPP experiments have helped create world class airports, it has also helped AAI (Airports Authority of India) in enhancing its revenues and focusing on developing airports and air navigation infrastructure in the rest of the country,” it said.
As per the Civil Aviation Ministry statement, PPP in infrastructure projects brings efficiency in service delivery, expertise, enterprise and professionalism apart from harnessing the needed investments in the public sector. The decision to lease the airports under the PPP model is expected to enhance the revenue to AAI and increase the economic development in the concerned areas in terms of job creation and related infrastructure, as per the statement.