Adani Enterprises has emerged as the highest bidder for Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport of Guwahati at Rs 160 per passenger, beating National Investment and Infrastructure Fund's bid of Rs 155.

CNBC-TV18 was the first to report this development in the morning today. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has confirmed the news by releasing a statement.

A reply to a query on the same, sent to the Adani Group is awaited.

Adani Enterprises was the highest among the five bidders — NIIF, AMP Capital (GIF II Lux Holdco) which placed a bid of Rs 136 per passenger, GMR Airports Limited which placed a bid of Rs 59 and PNC Infratech Ltd, which had a Rs 18 per passenger bid.

With this, the group has emerged as the highest bidder for operating, managing and developing six airports — Jaipur, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore, Guwahati and Ahmedabad.

In November, the Union Cabinet had decided to privatise six airports to increase their efficiency and quality. The airports will be given out on a lease period of 50 years and in order to invite greater participation, prior airport experience was not among the mandatory bidding criteria.

As of now, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Cochin are the only private-run airports in the country.

On Monday, the group emerged as the highest bidder for Jaipur airport at Rs 174 per passenger fee to be paid by the company to the state-run airport operator on a monthly basis, for Ahmedabad airport at Rs 177 per passenger, for Mangaluru at Rs 115 rupees, for Lucknow airport at Rs 171 rupees and for Thiruvananthapuram at Rs 168.

In the technical round, AAI had received 32 bids from 10 companies for privatisation of six airports with Jaipur and Ahmedabad getting the maximum interest. Out of the 10 companies, Adani Enterprise and GMR group had submitted bids for all the six airports.

Other than these two, AMP Capital Investors (UK) Ltd, Italy's Autostrade, Cochin International Airport Ltd, I-Investments, KSIDC (Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation), NIIF (National Investment and Infrastructure Fund), PNC Infrastructure and Sanna Enterprises had also shown interest.

First Published:Feb 26, 2019 11:25 AM IST