Minister of State for Civil Aviation, K. C. Venugopal informed Rajya Sabha recently that the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Transport and Tourism on the issue of privatisation of airports have been received recently and are being examined.
As per the recommendations of the Task Force on Financing Plan for 12th Plan period, Government of India has `in principle` decided to bring operation, management and development of twenty airports at Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, Trichy, Varanasi, Indore, Amritsar, Udaipur, Gaya, Raipur, Bhopal, Agartala, Imphal, Mangalore and Vadodara in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode in a phased manner. The Government has invited applications from the prospective parties seeking their qualification. For this, Requests for Qualification (RFQ) have been issued for six airports namely Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur and Lucknow.
He further informed that the Government has constantly been responding to changing scenario and undertaking sector-specific measures to facilitate and enable growth of the civil aviation sector. Government has taken several measures to revive the aviation industry and ensure long term viability of the sector.
The issue of rationalisation of VAT on ATF has been taken up with the state governments; Director General of Foreign Trade has allowed direct import of ATF by airlines on actual user basis; Foreign airlines have been allowed to invest in the equity of domestic carriers up to 49 per cent; ECB upto US$ 1 billion has been permitted for the airlines to meet their working capital requirement; and Government has laid down Civil Aviation Authority Bill in Parliament are the measures included.
