India’s prevailing airport regulatory model has yielded “poor returns” for investors, global airports body Airports Council International (ACI) said on Thursday.

Asserting that transparent economic regulatory processes must be put in place in India, ACI Director-General Angela Gittens said, “The current regulatory model has yielded poor returns for investors and this could stifle development of India’s airports in the long run.”

Gittens, who met top government officials including those from the Civil Aviation Ministry here, said the Government should review its “approach towards regulation....India really needs to think about how much economic regulation is necessary,” she told newspersons.

“It is outmoded to have a very prescriptive economic regulatory model,” she said, giving the example of the UK which had “stepped away from such a system.” The ACI chief said private investors came in to invest in airport infrastructure with “one set of expectations but got something different“. Asked to elaborate, Gittens gave the examples of Hyderabad and Bangalore airports where the investors expected ‘dual till’ to be the concept of revenue sharing but landed up with the ‘single till’ model.

Under the single till principle, airport activities — both aeronautical and commercial — are taken together to determine the level of airport charges. By contrast, only aeronautical activities are taken into consideration under the dual till principle.

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