Our Bureau

Mr Ajay Prasad

New Delhi , Sept. 14

AFTER the withdrawal of the Bharti and Piramal consortia, the Government on Wednesday received six bids from top-notch industrial houses interested in participating in the restructuring of the Mumbai airport and five for the Delhi airport.

Addressing a press conference shortly after the expiry of the deadline for submissions of bids, the Secretary, Civil Aviation, Mr Ajay Prasad, said that the five bidders for Delhi airport included GMR that had teamed up with the operators of Frankfurt airport, Fraport; Reliance which had submitted a bid with ASA Mexico; D.S. Construction that had a tie-up with the Munich airport; Macquire that tied up with Airport de Paris; and the Essel Group in association with Turkish airport operator TAV. For the Mumbai airport, the Government has also received a bid from the GVK group that has a tie-up with the South African Airport.

"We are very satisfied with the level of competition. It is very good. If you see other sectors like telecom there were hardly two or three bidders," Mr Prasad said.

The Government will shortly decide on a date to open the technical bids and then start the process of evaluating them. Only those bidders who cross a certain level at the technical stage will see their financial bids being opened.

"We have not yet fixed a date for opening the technical bid. But it will be in the next few days. It will now be our effort to compete the entire process by the end of this year," the Secretary said.

He also said there was no question of lowering either the high standards or the stiff penalty clause that has been imposed on the foreign partner in the transaction document.

"The clause has not been properly interpreted. We want the operator to perform and set up a truly world-class airport. They must bind themselves to the project with a bank guarantee that will be given to the joint venture company, not the Government," Mr Prasad said. The stiff penalty clause of close to Rs 300 crore that had to be borne by the foreign partner was said to be the reason for the Singapore-based Changi and the Germany-based airport operator, Hochtief, to pull out of the project.

Breaking the Government's silence on what prompted Changi and Hochtief to withdraw, the Secretary said that the Bharti Group informed the Government that Changi was not confident of meeting the conditions that had been set and wanted more time.

"The Piramal and Hochtief group wrote to us wanting an entire review of the transaction document, which was not possible to accept at this late stage," Mr Prasad said.

Stating that the process of modernisation at both the airports would be done in a two-phased manner, the Secretary said that after the process was completed in Delhi, the airport would be able to handle 80 million passengers annually by 2025. Currently, the airport handles about 12.8 million passengers.

The problem in Mumbai, however, was that it was difficult to construct a second runway.

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