New Delhi, Feb 16: Singapore’s Changi Airport has sought more details from the Airports Authority of India before taking a call on the proposed limited operations and management contracts for Jaipur and Ahmadabad airports.
After taking off four AAI run airports — Kolkata, Chennai, Jaipur and Ahmadabad from its privatisation agenda, the NDA government had last year decided to hand over Jaipur and Ahmadabad airport to Changi under a limited O&M contract.
The documents containing more details on the two airports are likely to be furnished within this week to Changi, a senior AAI official said.
Owned by Singapore Government, Changi is world’s seventh busiest airport, having handled 55.4 million passengers and over 3.46 lakh aircraft movements in 2015.
AAI and Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) had, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Singapore last November, signed the MoU to co-operate in planning and development of Ahmadabad and Jaipur airports besides other aspects including traffic and commercial development, service quality and operations and management.
The Government also accorded its approval to the pact late last month.
“Globally, limited O&M contract models are prevalent for the entire airport operations. The AAI has no previous experience in awarding O&M contract model of terminal buildings to other entities…In order to implement the decision, it was necessary to ensure that a suitable entity be engaged for undertaking the O&M contract at Ahmadabad and Jaipur airports,” Government had said while giving its nod to the MoU.
The city side and air side of Ahmadabad and Jaipur airports, however, will continue to be managed directly by AAI.
By 2023-24, Ahmadabad is expected to see a total of 6.77 million passengers while that at Jaipur is anticipated to be 3.75 million.
This is the first time that the Government has taken onboard an overseas entity to “partially” operate and manage its airports.
