| New
policy for Greenfield airports by 2008: Praful Patel
13 November 2007
New
Delhi: The government will announce a new policy on Greenfield airports next
year, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said here Tuesday. "We
are on the verge of finalising the policy of creating Greenfield airports,"
Patel said at the Economic Editors' Conference currently underway here. He said,
that "by 2008 we should be having a new policy for Greenfield airports."
An inter-ministerial
group finalised a draft policy last month, which has been sent to the committee
on infrastructure, headed by prime minister Manmohan Singh. The committee will
forward it to the cabinet for final approval. The
new policy will not only restructure guidelines for approving new airports, but
also provide guidelines for granting technical approvals by various agencies involved
in airport construction. The
minister also said the government was aggressively looking at strengthening regional
airline services for providing better connectivity to tier-II and tier-III cities.
'It's a new
concept, and given the dynamics of the aviation industry, this is utterly needed.
This would not only be helpful in providing better connectivity but also in decongestion,'
he said.  The
new airports coming up in Delhi and Bangalore would be commissioned by March next
year, the minister informed the gathering.
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