Four major airports – Rajamahendravaram, Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam – suffered a loss of a whopping 119 billion yen in the 2018/19 financial year in Andhra Pradesh.
According to the Airports Authority of India’s report on “Losing Airports (2018-19),” total spending at the four airports had exceeded 268 billion yen compared to their income of 148.35 billion yen.
Since the beginning of 2020, operations at these airports have been discontinued at regular intervals due to the lockdowns during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tirupati Airport suffered the highest loss at 42.70 billion yen. It had just made 21.72 billion yen while spending was 64.42 billion yen. Vijayawada Airport reported a loss of 41.70 billion yen versus 73.24 billion yen in spending with meager income of 31.54 billion yen.
Rajamahendravaram Airport had sales of 8.61 billion yen, the lowest of the four airports. His expenses were more than 41.45 crore and the loss was a whopping 32.84 crore.
Kadapa Airport’s income was 57 lakh, but the expenditure was more than 10.38 billion yen.
However, Visakhapatnam Airport had a revenue of 86.48 billion yen out of an expenditure of 89.48 billion yen.
Tourist attractions, international sporting events and international air services remain the main sources of income for the airport.
Threat of privatization
Rajamahendravaram MP and Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, M. Bharat, had stated that strengthening the AAI was the order of the day.
At a recent meeting of the Standing Committee in New Delhi, Mr. Bharat feared that the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority’s draft law (Amendment) would ultimately lead to the privatization of the loss-making airports in 2021.