The Centre has made it mandatory for consortia bidding for the privatisation of Mumbai and Delhi airports to include an airport operator.
Further, the government has said additional weightage will be given to those companies in which airport operators have a minimum stake of 10 per cent.
"Each prospective bidder must be an airport operator or have at least one airport operator in its consortium. Airport operators will be required, at the least to enter into a service performance contract acceptable to the Airports Authority of India.
"Additional weightage will be given to prospective bidders with airport operators proposing to hold equity of no less than 10 per cent in the joint venture company," a clause in the document inviting expressions of interest says.
The government is planning to privatise the two airports through joint venture companies in which private parties will hold 74 per cent each. The balance 26 per cent stake will be held by the AAI and other public sector undertakings.
The last date for submitting expressions of intent is June 4, 2004 and the government plans to complete the privatisation by October 2004. "We welcome the attempt to privatise these airports and are sure that this process will set the benchmarks for future airport privatisation in India," said Athar Shahab, the transport sector head with the Infrastructure Development Finance Company, which is a prospective financier to the two airports.
The government has also said while the same company can bid for both airports, they will be eventually given only one airport to manage.
This is important as the two airports together accounted for 49 per cent of passenger traffic and 59 per cent of cargo traffic handled by airports in India in 2002-03.
ABN Amro are the financial consultants, while Amarchand & Mangaldas and Suresh A Shroff are the legal consultants to AAI for the privatisation.
