Adani Enterprises Ltd has placed the highest per passenger fee for running Guwahati Airport, making a clean sweep of the six non-metro airports that were put up for privatisation by the NDA government.
The Ahmedabad-based infrastructure conglomerate quoted a per passenger fee of Rs 160 when the price bids for the Guwahati airport was opened on Tuesday, helping the firm add to the five airports for which it had emerged the highest bidder on Monday.
The airports currently run by the Airports Authority of India are Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati.
“The airports at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore and Guwahati remain lifelines to their respective states that will enable us to infuse enhanced growth and give wings to the aspirations of the Indian people. We would be aiming to scale up the infrastructure to bring these facilities on par with global standards,” a spokesperson for Adani Group said.
“The bid results show that the number of players in the Indian airports space has expanded. So, between duopoly plus AAI, that broad-base has happened which is quite good as far as the overall sector is concerned,” Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, director and practice leader, transport and logistics at Crisil Infrastructure Advisory told BusinessLine.
Even with this kind of participation in the tender for privatisation of the six airports, significant interest would be there for any kind of brownfield asset monetisation of the government. Going forward, private capital is ready to be deployed for brownfield asset monetisation, he added.
AAI had sought bids for the operation and management of existing airport assets as well as their upgradation and development of additional air-side terminals, city-side and land-side infrastructure for Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram airports.
The winning bid is decided on the basis of the highest per-passenger fee that the concessionaire will pay to the AAI monthly on a 50-year contract.