{"id":79618,"date":"2018-07-26T23:05:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T05:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=79618"},"modified":"2018-07-26T14:52:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T21:52:22","slug":"india-denies-airports-authority-of-india-proposes-to-buy-controlling-stake-in-lankas-mattala-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/07\/26\/india-denies-airports-authority-of-india-proposes-to-buy-controlling-stake-in-lankas-mattala-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"India denies Airports Authority of India proposes to buy controlling stake in Lanka\u2019s Mattala airport"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"social-sharethis-post\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy NewsIn.Asia<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"social-sharethis-post\">New Delhi, July 26 (PTI): The Indian Civil Aviation Ministry today said there is no proposal under consideration for the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to buy a controlling stake in Sri Lanka\u2019s Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the Press Trust of India reported.<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The Ministry\u2019s comments come less than a week after the Sri Lankan Government said that it has asked the AAI to submit its business plan for operating the Mattala airport.<\/p>\n<p>In the Lok Sabha, BJP member Poonam Mahajan asked whether the AAI is considering purchasing a controlling stake in the Mattala airport, thereby gaining ownership of the airport.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"India denies Airports Authority of India proposes to buy controlling stake in Lanka\u2019s Mattala airport\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/newsin.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Jayant-Sinha.jpg?fit=660%2C440&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"India denies Airports Authority of India proposes to buy controlling stake in Lanka\u2019s Mattala airport\" width=\"474\" height=\"316\" \/><\/p>\n<p>No madam. No such proposal is under consideration at present,\u201d Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in a written reply.<\/p>\n<p>To the query on whether the AAI would build a flying school and a maintenance, repair and overhaul unit at the Mattala airport, Sinha replied in the negative.<\/p>\n<p>On July 19, Sri Lanka\u2019s Civil Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva had told the country\u2019s Parliament that the AAI has been asked to submit its business plan for operating the loss-making Mattala airport.<\/p>\n<p>The USD 210 million facility, 241-km south-east of Colombo, is dubbed the world\u2019s emptiest airport\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The airport was officially opened in March 2013. The only international flight operating from there was halted in May due to recurrent losses and flight safety issues.<\/p>\n<p>The Mattala airport was built with high interest commercial loans from China.<span class=\"st_sharethis_hcount\"><span class=\"stButton\"><span class=\"stMainServices st-sharethis-counter\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>(The featured image at the top shows the Indian Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy NewsIn.Asia New Delhi, July 26 (PTI): The Indian Civil Aviation Ministry today said there is no proposal under consideration for the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to buy a controlling stake in Sri Lanka\u2019s Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the Press Trust of India reported. The Ministry\u2019s comments come less than a week after the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}