The Uttar Pradesh government is actively pursuing setting up of a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) hub with assistance from Union Civil Aviation Ministry in the state and has proposed two such hubs — at Meerut and at Jewar (Noida).
The hub will cater to both civil and defence aircraft and help domestic and international airlines to bring down maintenance cost.
The move comes close on heels of Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announcing measures to boost domestic aviation sector in May. She had said that steps would be taken to make India a MRO hub for aircraft.
In Lucknow, MSME Minister Sidhartha Nath Singh said, “India is one of the fastest-growing aviation markets globally and has high growth potential. The UP government is in talks with the US and a French company for setting up of MRO facilities. Both are ready, but have been asking for incentives such as GST relaxations, for which, the Centre needs to tweak its policies. If we don’t give them incentives, they would rather go to Sri Lanka and Singapore.”
“There is no dearth of land in UP so accommodating both companies is not going to be a problem,” he added.
The minister, however, did not disclose names of the companies and said that while the MRO in Jewar would cater to bigger aircraft, the facility at Meerut would cater to smaller ones.
An international airport has been conceived at Jewar in National Capital Region and is being tipped as the biggest civil airport project in Asia. The airport project has been awarded to Zurich Airport International for development and is expected to generate revenues of Rs 1 lakh crore in 30 years after it becomes operational in 2023.
An MRO complex has been incorporated in the techno-feasibility study conducted by PWC and it was the basis for global bidding of this PPP. As per the techno-economic feasibility report for Jewar airport, the MRO market demand arising out of India is expected to go up to $5 billion by 2036.
Only 10 per cent of the MRO market is currently being serviced in India, the remaining being outside the country.
At present, most MROs in India provide only basic check services. For advanced services, airlines use MRO hubs in South East Asia, Sri Lanka and west Asia. Most commercial airlines in India have long-term contracts with MRO service providers abroad.
