Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Apart from its push to expand airport infrastructure in priority areas to promote the regional connectivity scheme, the Centre has also proposed expansion of airport capacity by more than five times to handle a billion trips a year, compared with nearly 180 million trips now.
The growing air passenger traffic in India, while seen as an opportunity, is also considered to be a challenge given the limited capacity at larger airports such as Delhi and Mumbai, which are nearing saturation.
“In the last three years, the domestic air passenger traffic grew at 18 per cent per annum and our airlines companies placed orders for more than 900 aircraft,” Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley said on Thursday while presenting the Union Budget for 2018-19. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has 124 airports. We propose to expand our airport capacity more than five times to handle a billion trips a year under a new initiative — NABH (New generation Airports for Bharat) Nirman. Balance sheet of AAI shall be leveraged to raise more resources for funding this expansion,” he added.
Last week, civil aviation secretary R N Choubey, during a press conference said that to finance the regional connectivity scheme, funds will be diverted from AAI’s dividend payable to the Centre, to the regional connectivity fund. For 2017-18, AAI contributed a sum of Rs 200 crore to the fund, and the civil aviation ministry expects to receive a sum of Rs 500 crore in the upcoming financial year, subject to approval from the finance ministry.
In November, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha had spoken of the government’s plans to expand air connectivity by establishing around 100 airports in the country, doubling the current number, in 15 years at an estimated investment of Rs 4 lakh crore. 70 of these proposed 100 airports were said to be in places where no air connectivity is there so far, while the remaining will be expansion of existing facilities. “In our 20 year passenger forecasts, IATA (International Air Transport Association) anticipates India will become the 3rd largest aviation market by 2024. But this is by no means guaranteed. To make this a reality, airport capacity in India needs to be augmented and expanded quickly…We urge the government to urgently look at innovative approaches to bridge the infrastructure shortfall,” said IATA’s country director-India, Amitabh Khosla.
