The Air India divestment by the Indian state is to be concluded during “the next fiscal period”. The winning bidder will get the main airline and a 100% stake in Air India Express and 50% stake in Air India SATS, which provides ground handling and cargo services at major domestic airports
The privatization of Air India Limited will be completed during the upcoming financial year 2021-22, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament today while presenting the Union Budget. The Tata Group and an employee consortium are among interested parties that have submitted expressions of interest for the airline.
The employee group comprises 219 employees of the airline and is headed by the director (commercial) and board member Meenakshi Mallik. It hopes to tie up with a private equity fund. Their bid is currently being evaluated by the Ministry of Finance's Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and the qualified bidders, who will be allowed to make financial bids for the airline, will be revealed in the coming days.
The government has earmarked a divestment target of ₹1.75 trillion for FY 2021, compared to ₹1.05 lakh trillion for FY20 and ₹80,000 crore for FY19.
The TATA group has financial worries of its own right now and is unlikely to be able to do much good for the carrier in the mid-term. Will India suffer the airline to be modernised? Will they suffer mass redundancies and fleet cuts with aircraft sold at real values around half of the value that the airline has them booked at now? Who in the right mind would take on this task at this time when a new private airline with no debt can be started? The employee consortium is likely to be the only real bidder and this process will fall-apart yet again.