NEW DELHI, June 11: The new Civil Aviation Policy may come up within a couple of week as the Ministry has submitted it to the Cabinet for its approval. The Cabinet is expected to discuss and clear the policy in a week or two.
Though the Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathy Raju did not confirm the date or time period for the announcement of the policy, he did said the policy is in the offing. At the same time, Dr Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Civil Aviation said in his remark during a press conference here today that ”the policy is in its final shape and will come out soon”.
Dr Sharma in his remarks made it clear that India is the only economy where passenger traffic is growing at 22 per cent. No other country is near us. We have become 9th largest aviation sector and government is trying to get the 3rd position in this sector in the world.
Keeping this ambitious target to become 3rd largest aviation industry in the world the new policy is said to be must which may allow a large number of new players and foreign direct investment in it. It is believed that capping of fares may be dealt in the policy as it is believed that government is thinking to regulate the fares based on flying time between two cities, specially between tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
According to the sources, the Policy was submitted by the ministry to the Cabinet last week and is due to be discussed in the Cabinet as and when it meets next week.
The draft policy has been in discussion for more than a year now and industry is waiting for the same for quite long time. Industry is hoping to get clarification on several issues through the policy.
It is expected that the forthcoming policy will deal with improving regional connectivity, specially between tier 2 and tier 3 cities. The submission of draft policy to the Cabinet got delayed many times due to several issues of contentions.
The one such issue was related to the licensing for international operation. In the draft policy it was mentioned that for the license the concerned airlines must have an experience of at least five years with 20 aircraft in its fleet.
IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir and Jet Airways wanted a continuance of the earlier policy while the new airlines AirAsia India and Vistara wanted it scrapped as it hurts them to get the license for the international operations. (UNI)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel