Bhuabeswar: The Biju Patnaik International Airport at Bhubaneswar is soon going to be privatised.

The union civil aviation ministry is proposing to offer the Bhubaneswar Airport on lease basis to private investors under PPP mode this fiscal. The successful bidder would get the rights to operate, manage and develop airport for a period of 50 years. The airport facilities are now being managed by state-owned Airports Authority of India(AAI).

India Whispers overheard that the government is going to offer the airport management on the basis of highest per passenger fee(PPF) offered to the AAI.

Bhubaneswar has witnessed traffic of 4.15 million passengers in 2018-19.

Taking into consideration the significant interest exhibited by the investors in the airport development sector, the union civil aviation ministry, in fact, has lined up as many as 10 airports including Bhubaneswar in the country for privatisation. The airports that are in the list are Patna(4.06 million passenger), Calicut(3.36m), Indore(3.15m), Coimbatore(3m), Varanasi(2.78m), Amritsar(2.52m), Ranchi(2.25m), Raipur(2.02m) and Trichy( 1.57) besides Bhubaneswar(4.15m).

Early, in February 2019, the ministry has bid out profit making airports at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Trivandrum, Guwahati and Mangalore on the basis of highest per passenger fee(PPF).