New Delhi, Aug 7 (IANS) The Airports Authority of India (AAI) and public-private partnerships have incurred a capital expenditure (capex) of more than Rs 96,000 crore during FY 2019-20 to FY 2024-25 on the development, upgradation, and modernisation of airports in the country to keep pace with the growth in air traffic, the Parliament was informed on Thursday.
This includes the AAI’s share of more than Rs 25,000 crore and the remaining by private airport developers.
The AAI incurs capital expenditure mainly from its own resources and in some part from the budgetary grant of Rs 4,500 crore allocated for the revival and upgradation of unserved and underserved airports, heliports, and water aerodromes under Phase I of the Regional Connectivity Scheme – Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (RCS-UDAN). Besides, Rs 1,000 crore has been allocated in Phase-II of the RCS-UDAN to revive additional airports, heliports, water aerodromes and advanced landing grounds during the period 2023-24 to 2025-26, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.
The private airport operators incur capex from their own sources, he added.
The investments have been made in new airports, expansion and modification of existing terminals, addition of new passenger facilities, new terminals, expansion and strengthening of existing runways, aprons, and Air Navigation Services (ANS) work like control tower and technical blocks.
Based on the reconciled figures for the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) period (FY 2019-20 to 2024-25), capex expenditure by AAI and private airportdDevelopers during the last five years has been Rs 11,742 crore (FY 2020-21), Rs 13,294 crore (FY 2021-22), Rs 17,879 crore (FY 2022-23), Rs 19,260 crore (FY 2023-24), and Rs 19,317 crore (FY 2024-25).
The minister further stated that upgradation and modernisation of airports is a continuous process and is undertaken by the AAI and other private airport operators from time to time, depending on the availability of land, commercial viability, socio-economic considerations, traffic demand, willingness of airlines to operate to and from such airports.
Since FY 2019-20, airport projects have been undertaken by the AAI and private airport developers at several airports across the country, including at Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Mopa, Navi Mumbai, Noida (Jewar), Bhogapuram, Ayodhya, Kushinagar, Sindhudurg, Hollongi, Dholera, Dehradun, Agartala, Patna, Vijayawada, Deoghar, Amritsar, Chennai, and Tirupati.
Airport modernisation and expansion projects have also been taken up at Mangalore, Kolkata, Port Blair, and Surat, Tiruchirapally, Kolhapur, Jabalpur, Gwalior, Rajkot, Leh, Hubballi, Imphal, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Rajahmundry, Belagavi, Shivamogga, Vijayapura, Hassan, Prayagraj, Tuticorin, Rewa, Satna, and Datia, the minister added.
–IANS
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