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The government is looking at various ways of reducing the user development fees (UDF), to be charged by the developers of greenfield airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad, even after the ad hoc period when the Ministry of Civil
Aviation is expected to decide on the charges. According to the current concession agreement, both the airports will charge user fees on their own for an ad hoc period of 120 days from the start of commercial operations. After that period, they will present the final audited project cost of the airport to the ministry.
Commercial operations in the new Hyderabad and Bangalore airports are scheduled to begin from March 16 and March 28, respectively.
"Based on that project cost we will decide what the user development charge should be, and will try to keep it as low as possible. For instance, one of the measures we might look at is enhancing the period for recovering costs from five years so that the amount of UDF levied comes down," said a senior civil aviation ministry official.
For the first three months of operations, Hyderabad airport will charge a UDF of $25 per international passenger while the user fee on domestic passengers has been waived.
BIAL, which is developing the Bangalore airport, has also been asked to waive user fees for domestic passengers, while it charges around Rs 950 for international passengers. Earlier, BIAL was supposed to charge Rs 650 for domestic passengers as well.
"BIAL has proposed to waive 50 per cent of the UDF for both international and domestic passengers. However, we have said the UDF on domestic passengers have to be waived completely," said K N Shrivastava, joint secretary, civil aviation.
Meanwhile, regarding the renovation work at Delhi airport, he said it would be completed by this June instead of April, adding "50 per cent of renovation has already been done".
As an interim measure, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) is planning to use the Haj terminal for use by the international airlines.
"We will discuss with various airlines tomorrow for renovating the Haj terminal. We will take their suggestions on how best to work things out so that operations can be carried forward smoothly," said Andrew Harrison, COO, DIAL.
The Haj terminal will be renovated after four months of getting the approval for the additional manpower -- immigration and Customs officials etc -- from the departments concerned.
"The Bureau of Immigration has assured that the future requirement will be met shortly," Shrivastava added.
Among other measures, DIAL is also setting up eight in-line baggage systems in place of x-ray machines at the international terminal.
Accordingly, the number of entry gates, immigration and check-in counters will also be significantly increased.
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