GANDHINAGAR: On Thursday, the state government, Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Union civil aviation ministry signed an MoU for development of 11 airports in Gujarat for intra-state air services. The MoU was inked under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) of the central government.After signing the MoU, Union civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju answered journalists' questions about the Centre's plans for airport development in the state and promotion of intra-state air services. The minister gave information explaining why some projects were dropped midway and the Centre's future plans for air traffic in the state.Before Changi came into the picture, the idea of privatizing Ahmedabad and Jaipur airports was considered and then dropped, said Raju. Thereafter officials discussed how to run it economically because handing it to the private sector may create problems and private players have different economic concerns. Then someone suggested that some specific tasks could be handed over to the private sector, Raju said.Changi was requested to run Ahmedabad and Jaipur but Changi was not interested as running only two airports in the whole country was 'small-scale' work and not sufficiently economically.Raju said that this did not change make any difference as their main main goal was to improve passenger services.

Source: Times of India September 02, 2016 02:37 UTC