Airport Authority To Raise $300 Million Through External Commercial Borrowings

Airports Authority of India (AAI) plans to mobilise $300 million through External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) during the next fiscal for capital expenditure funding, a top official of the government-run airport operator said on Friday.

AAI Chairman Arvind Singh said the ECBs would help the authority in its plans to double the current passenger handling capacity of 345 million passengers per annum through the airports under its management to 700-750 million passengers per annum by 2030.

"We will be going for the ECBs next financial year," Mr Singh said, adding that the board approved the proposal a month ago.

He was talking to media on the sidelines of Wings India 2020, the civil aviation summit which began here Friday.

The state-run airports operator would be spending Rs 5,000 crore on capex for the next five years beginning this year. He said they planned to invest around Rs 25,000 crore over the next five years in developing new airports and expanding the existing ones.

The PSU runs 90 out of 110 functional airports in the country. "Out of these airports, we are upgrading some of them. We are also building new terminals and new greenfield airports," he said.

AAI was also in the process of converting underserved and unserved airports under the UDAN scheme, for which the government is providing funds. The Centre has already allotted Rs 4,500 crore to build airports under the UDAN scheme.

AAI has operationalised 48 underserved and unserved airports over the last three years and has set a target of operationalising another 100 such airports.

Mr Singh said AAI was spending Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 4,000 crore a year and from this year they would increase the capex to Rs 5,000 crore per annum.

He said the country had 21 approved greenfield airport projects and five of them had been completed.

On the proposed water aerodromes, he said non-scheduled operations would be starting from some water aerodromes in the next financial year.