Our Bureau The Centre is mulling a four-point bailout package for the debt-laden, loss-making Air India.
The strategy includes a financial package, reforms, a professionally managed board structure, and practices to retain the workforce, Jayant Sinha, Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, said here on Monday.
In June, the Centre shelved a plan to sell a majority stake in Air India due to a lack of bidder interest. The government had originally proposed to offload a majority stake in the national carrier and transfer management control to private players. The buyer would have had to take over ₹24,000-crore debt along with over ₹8,000 crore of liabilities.
“The revival package is in its final stages. We are also looking at what we should do financially for Air India. The timeline is to do it as soon as possible. These are complicated and detailed work that we have to do,” he told media persons on the sidelines of the 187th annual general meeting of the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce.
Air India’s debt is about ₹48,000 crore as of March 2017.
New airports
According to Sinha, the Centre is allotting ₹100,000 crore over a five-year-period to set up new airports and increase the capacity of existing ones under the Navnirman initiative. This will keep in mind the expected capacity addition needed over the next 15-20 years.
India at present has 100 airports with 220 million trips made annually. The target is to take that number up to one billion trips soon, said Sinha.
According to Sinha, there is a need for capacity addition at Kolkata’sNSC Bose International Airport. However, with the airport in the thickly populated northern fringes of the city, land is a constraint. “Officials are working with the West Bengal government to see how to ensure capacity addition,” he said.