AAI expects UDF levy to boost annual income by Rs100-cr

New Delhi:  The Airports Authority of India (AAI) expects to boost annual income by Rs100 crore should it be cleared by the ministry of civil aviation to charge user development fee (UDF) from passengers at nine domestic airports. UDF is a levy that allows money spent on building airports and related facilities to be recovered by an investor.

The AAI is already levying UDF at the Jaipur airport. It has now sought approval to levy the fee at an additional eight airports around the country.

The airports authority has begun charging the levy at the Jaipur International Airport from 1 January this year. A fee of Rs1,000 is applicable on each international passenger and Rs150 on each domestic passenger.

At the other eight airports - Udaipur, Amritsar, Mangalore, Varanasi, Vishakhapatnam, Trichy, Ahmedabad and Thiruvananthapuram - the authority proposes to charge Rs250 for domestic, and Rs900 for international passengers.

The AAI has already invested considerable sums of money upgrading these airports and now that work at these locations is complete it wishes to recover costs in order to proceed with work at other locations.

In the period 2008-09, AAI invested Rs2,547.57 crore on modernising airport terminals, passenger facilities and air traffic and navigational aids at various terminals around the country. It has earned a profit of Rs687.21 crore on revenues of Rs4,185.95 crore for the period.

The authority is also taking up the city-side development of Kolkata, Hyderabad (Begumpet), Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Indore, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Guwahati and Jaipur airports through public-private partnership programmes.