New Delhi, Mar 13 (IANS): As per the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), 25 airports of Airports Authority of India (AAI) have been earmarked for leasing over the years 2022 to 2025, the Parliament was told on Monday.

The AAI has leased out eight of its airports - Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru, and Thiruvananthapuram through Public Private Partnership (PPP) for operation, management and development on a long-term lease basis.

Out of these, Delhi and Mumbai airports were handed over in 2006. During the last five years i.e. from 2017-18 to 2021-22, the AAI has received revenue of approximately Rs 5,500 crore from Delhi airport and Rs 5,174 crore from Mumbai Airport, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Gen V.K. Singh (retd) told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

According to the reply, the six airports recently awarded under PPP including Mangaluru, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram have been handed over to the Concessionaires on October 31, 2020, November 2, 2020, November 7, 2020, October 8, 2021, October 11, 2021 and October 14, 2021, respectively and till February 2023, the AAI has received concession fees of approximately Rs 896 crore from the concessionaires for these six airports.

Further, the AAI has also received an amount of Rs 2,349 crore in the form of upfront fee towards the capital expenditure incurred by it at these airports.

During the PPP process i.e. from March 2018 till handing over the airports to the PPP partner, the AAI spent an amount of approximately Rs 1,970 crore towards capital works at these six PPP airports. This Capital expenditure incurred by AAI has been paid to AAI by the PPP partner.