The government has received two formal Expressions of Interest so far for Air India from aviation market leader IndiGo and from an unnamed foreign airline..”The NDA government’s move earlier this month to allow FDI by foreign airlines in debt-ridden Air India upto 49 per cent was an indicator that it was serious about disinvestment in the loss-making cash-strapped national carrier in order to bring about a fresh infusion of funds. One will be for disinvestment of Air India, its low-cost arm Air India Express and Air India’s joint venture with Singapore Airport Terminal Service (SATS) known as AI-SATS, the second will be for the airline’s engineering services, the third will be for its ground handling services, while the fourth will be for its regional carrier Alliance Air, which operates to smaller towns in the country using ATR aircraft. Civil aviation ministry sources also cited the examples of global carriers such as British Airways, Australia’s Qantas and Germany’s Lufthansa that had been privatised.The information memorandum will be issued separately for each of the four separate sale processes. On Air India, Mr Jaitley had said: “The government has also initiated the process of strategic disinvestment in 24 CPSEs.
The government owns 100 per cent of Air India at present. The government has already infused an equity of around Rs 25,000 crores into Air India in the past five years. This includes air compressor strategic privatisation of Air India. The legal closure of the transaction will take place by the end of this year.Finance minister Arun Jaitley had officially announced in his Budget speech on Thursday that the government intends to privatise the national carrier.However, the government has already made it clear that the critical “substantial ownership and effective control of Air India” remains in Indian hands.Mr Sinha said an information memorandum containing the assets of the national carrier will be issued very soon as a public document for potential bidders. The government had last year constituted an inter-ministerial group to chalk out the strategy in this regard.New Delhi: In what the government says will be the largest-ever privatisation exercise carried out in the country, minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha announced on Friday that Air India will be run by a private player by the end of 2018 and the winning bidder will be declared by the end of June after a transparent disinvestment process.
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