At a time when corporates across the board are cutting down on their capital expenditure plans amid the slowdown, Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), the flagship company of the Ahmedabad-based $13 billion Adani Group, has lined up a capital expenditure of ₹26,000 crore across its businesses in the next five years.
Jugeshinder Singh, Group CFO, Adani Group, told The Hindu , “We have a capex of ₹26,000 crore for the next five years and most of it will be towards airport development.”
“We are not cutting down on any capex plans. In fact, most of the capex for this fiscal has been exhausted and the remaining small capex of ₹1,800 crore will be done ahead of the end of this fiscal.”
The company entered the airport sector in February this year by winning bids to operate six airports — incuding in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru — for the next 50 years.
The company intends to invest more than ₹7,000 crore in developing these five airports in addition to making upfront payment to the Airport Authority of India (AAI).
When asked about aggressive bidding, Mr. Singh said: “You may say the bidding is aggressive when you consider that we have bid for 11 million passengers in Ahmedabad. But Ahmedabad attracts 13 million non-passengers and we will build our business model to get some benefit from non-passengers. We have bid as per our business case.”
Eyeing stake in MIAL
The company is also eyeing significant stake in Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) for ₹10,000 crore and has bid for the ₹29,500-crore greenfield Jewar Airport in Noida.
Adani Group is said to be the top contender for the global tender floated to hire a developer for the proposed airport by the Noida International Airport Ltd.
