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Karnataka intl airport project work to take off in July

Work on the proposed international airport at Devanahalli near Bangalore is likely to commence by end of July, Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar said today.

He said global tenders for the project would be invited in a day or two and the selection process would be transparent.

He expressed happiness that tenders were being invited within a month after the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka government. Construction work would commence within the next 45 days and the project might be executed through a consortium on a build own and operate (BOO) basis, he added.

He said while the state government and the Centre would invest 13 per cent each on the project, the remaining 74 per cent would be through the bidder.

Referring to the Cochin International Airport, he said that project, in which the Kerala government had invested 51 per cent and the rest by over 30,000 shareholders, was the first ''people's airport'' in the country with 11,500 feet runway, facilitating take-off of 747-400 Boeing.

He said the Bangalore model would be adopted for further corporatisation of airports in the country. The international airport at Devanahalli would be the first greenfield airport to be included under corporatisation by the infrastructure taskforce. This would give tremendous scope to chisel out a model, he felt.

Kumar said the taskforce, headed by K C Pant, has decided on a four-pronged strategy which, among other things, included a long-term lease of 30 years and subsequent final lease of 29 years to ensure better commercial viability and customer services.

He said out of the 120 airports in the country, only 16 were making profits. While the Airports Authority of India made an annual profit of Rs 4 billion, Rs 940 million were earmarked for cross subsidisation to balance the loss incurred by most of the airports.

Since it would be difficult to assess land value and other property details of the loss-making airports, the government had decided to give them on long lease and the lease rentals would be realised, he added.

To a question, he said except the airports in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Madras and Cochin, all others were under loss in south India.

UNI

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