There has been a sharp increase in the number of air travelers due to the increasing vaccination in the country and the decrease in the cases of corona infection. However, international flights have been stopped till the new year in view of the knock of the new version of Covid-19, Omicron.
Meanwhile, the big news has come that due to the increasing number of air passengers in the country on an annual basis and to make the aviation sector a profitable deal, the government has made a new monetization plan.
It has been told in a report that under this, 25 airports will be monetized in the coming three years.
The information about this scheme of the Central Government has been shared by the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, VK Singh.
Monetization of 25 airports has been planned, he said. To prepare the list, the airports of the country have been selected on the basis of their annual traffic trends. VK Singh said that all airports with annual traffic of more than 0.4 million (four lakh) passengers have been selected for privatization.
The Minister of State in his address said that 25 airports selected by the government as a part of the government’s plans for asset monetization are located at Nagpur, Varanasi, Dehradun, Trichy, Indore, Chennai, Calicut, Coimbatore, Bhubaneswar and Patna. Apart from this, the government also plans to privatize airports in Madurai, Tirupati, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Raipur, Rajahmundry, Vadodara, Amritsar, Surat, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Bhopal and Vijayawada.
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According to the report, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi and Jodhpur airports will be privatized in the financial year 2022-23. After this, Chennai, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Vadodara, Bhopal and Hubli airports will be monetized in the financial year 2023-24. After this, preparations have been made to hand over Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry airports to private hands by 2025.
It has been told in the report that 133 out of 136 airports present across the country are such that are running in losses. VK Singh in his response said that 133 out of 136 airports in the country have suffered heavy losses in 2020-21 due to the corona virus epidemic. Earnings data for 136 airports in India showed that they collectively reported a loss of Rs 2,882.74 crore in 2020-21, against a loss of Rs 80.18 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 465.91 crore in 2018-19.
