The Indian government and Ministry of Civil Aviation are all set to create a strong foundation of a robust aviation ecosystem for India, eyeing the rising passenger traffic and huge aircraft orders from domestic carriers. 

However, is this growth equally distributed across the nation? Or angled towards certain regions and cities? If this is true, is the government’s plan of building over 200 airports in the next 5 years viable? How will the government manage to get people to travel from these airports? 

Against this backdrop, Bloomberg has released a report in which the government is planning to sell about six of its loss-making airports towards the end of FY2025-26. The government plans to do so by bundling them with profitable airports to make them more attractive to investors. Otherwise, who will buy a loss-making infrastructure?

This marks the third privatisation round for airports and it will see a total of 11 airports on offer.

Mathrubhumi could not independently verify the authenticity of the information contained in the report.

If we look at the passenger travel statistics across these 11 airports, they handled about 13.5 million domestic passengers and 2.4 million international passengers in the nine months from January 25, according to the report, which added that this accounts for about 10% of the total domestic traffic and around 4% of international traffic.

Now, let us look at the airports that can be privatised. 

The remote airports of Kushinagar and Gaya, which hardly see any aircraft or passengers might be bundled with commercially viable Varanasi aerodrome. 

Bhubaneswar and Amritsar airports are to be clubbed with Hubli and Kangra, while Raipur and Tiruchirapalli will be bundled with Aurangabad and Tirupati, respectively, according to the report.

As expected, Gautam Adani, a name synonymous with major metro airports in India is expected to be the top contender. Adani Airport Holdings Ltd is currently India's largest airport operator. The airports will go to whoever bids to share the highest revenue per passenger with the Airports Authority of India to ensure transparency in the sharing of earnings.

The airport sales are part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target to raise INR 47,000 lakh crore from offloading state assets in the financial year 2025-26 as it looks for revenue sources to reduce its budgetary shortfall to 4.4% of the gross domestic product (GDP).