Gadkari, Prabhu, Goyal and Raju to be part of Air India privatising panel
Senior Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Suresh Prabhu, Piyush Goyal and Ashok Gajapathi Raju will be part of a five-member ministerial panel headed by finance minister Arun Jaitley tasked with deciding the process of privatising Air India, which may start by December. The committee’s brief is to finalise the structure and procedure of privatising the debt-laden national carrier. The government wants the process to be finalised speedily and bidding to start within six months, an official said. “The mood in the government is that the process should get underway quickly,” said the official. The Union cabinet cleared the divestment of loss-making Air India and five of its subsidiaries last Wednesday. It said the ministerial panel will decide on how much stake will be divested and the universe of bidders — whether a foreign company can bid. The panel will also determine how the airline’s unsustainable debt will be treated, the spinning off of assets to a shell company, and demerger and strategic disinvestment of three profit-making subsidiaries. Air India’s three profit-making units are lowfare international carrier Air India Express, ground-handling unit AI Transport Services and AI-SATS, a 50:50 ground-handling JV with Singapore Airport Terminal Services. The government decided to sell Air India after hopes of the airline’s revival turned bleak, with losses of more than Rs 50,000 crore and debt of about Rs 55,000 crore continuing to accumulate. The carrier is afloat thanks to a Rs 30,231-crore, nine-year bailout programme approved by the previous government in 2012. The Tata Group and low-fare carrier IndiGo have shown interest in acquiring Air India. While the Tata Group has not made its interest official, IndiGo has written to the aviation ministry saying it may bid for the airline. IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said in a letter to employees that its “interest in Air India is primarily in its international operations.” IndiGo cofounder Rakesh Gangwal has significant experience with turnarounds as former CEO of US Airways. He has also dealt with airline unions, which might come in handy in any possible acquisition of Air India. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the recommendations of Niti Aayog on strategic disinvestment of Air India and five of its subsidiaries based on the recommendations of the Core Group of Secretaries on Disinvestment. The government may look at exiting Air India completely. The Niti Aayog proposed total privatisation of the national carrier in a report to the Prime Minister’s Office. Parker Ehinger Womens Jersey
Can an airport be a destination?
Kolkata: Airports, for most travellers, tend to fall into two categories. The first is the shoot-me-now domain of the budget airline, where passengers are kettled into pens akin to those found in a knacker’s yard. The second is the not-as-smart-as-it-thinks international hub. This is a place where rush-hour crowds, a dire lack of seating and offensive coffee see you trot to the gate as fast as possible. The less time spent in these vacuous, cookie-cutter hangars, the better. But – wait – there is a third. A holy grail game-changer, with easy-on-the-wallet street food, custom furniture and vernacular architecture. And Changi Airport, on a spit of reclaimed land in Singapore, claims to be such a utopia. Here, I’ve heard, it’s not uncommon for fanatical locals to spend all weekend eating, drinking and shopping without once leaving the mall-like hive of terminals. I have a 48-hour layover in Singapore coming up, so instead of going into the city, I’m going to have a holiday in the airport, from Saturday to Monday morning. 9.00am. Departures level, a little bleary-eyed from an overnight flight, and I’m zipping to T3 on the Skytrain, a landmark monorail that shocked everyone as Asia’s first driverless train when it opened in 1990, and now ferries passengers between the terminals. We whisk past Changi’s latest madcap attraction; the Jewel, a new, S$1.7b terminal-in-progress that’s due open in 2019. Once finished, it will house a hedge maze, 130ft waterfall, tropical canopy walkway, and “indoorto clouds”. Barmy? Even Singaporeans think its nuts. 10.00am. Indoor clouds are just the start here at the world’s sixth busiest airport. Eyeing the airport diorama on the public concourse, it’s clear the razzamatazz is relentless. Brandon Kintzler Womens Jersey
GST: Aviation sector to face teething problems, says SpiceJet CMD Ajay Singh
In a U-turn, the ministry later said it was prepared for the GST roll-out from the stipulated date. “I think it is a revolutionary reform and the government needs to be lauded for its courage to go forward with such a big reform. Any such reform will have its share of teething problems and so will this one,” Singh told reporters at an event here. Double taxation on import of aircraft wherein their import as well as leasing of the same plane will invite separate taxes is an area of concern that the airlines have shared with the government, he said. The SpiceJet CMD said input tax credit being not available for economy class tickets -— a segment where there are more number of passengers, was another matter of concern. The aviation sector is likely to face “teething problems” for four to six months due to the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), SpiceJet CMD Ajay Singh said today. He, however, said his airline was “fully prepared” to usher in the indirect tax regime from July 1, and that airlines were working along with the government to resolve any concern. The aviation ministry had earlier sought postponement of the GST implementation by two months on the ground that airlines needed more time to revamp their systems to comply with the new tax regime. Input tax credit allows an entity to deduct the levies paid for the inputs while paying the taxes on the final output. Since GST is applicable for goods as well as services, input tax credit provides a leeway for the entities concerned. “We will wait for a clarification,” he said. “Any reform of this magnitude will have its share of problems and this one will too. It will take four to six months (to resolve them),” Singh noted. Airline officials have maintained that making changes in the global ticket distribution system to ensure compliance with GST would take time. Airlines are also in a fix over the possibility of movement of stocks, equipment or aircraft parts being taxed under the new taxation policy. Global airlines body International Air Transport Association (IATA) has also sought clarifications on the tax treatment for the aviation sector under GST and claimed there were “information gaps”. On the impact of demonetisation, the SpiceJet CMD said the airline’s yields had improved and that the impact of the note ban came down over the past two quarters. Max Jones Authentic Jersey