New Delhi: The Centre has assured the state-owned national carrier Air India in the form of guaranteed borrowing, Ministry of Civil Aviation Secretary RN Chaubey said on Tuesday.

The reason behind, according to Mr. Chaubey is that after we come to know that the option of selling Air India would not be viable with regards to the required amount, then the bidding is of no use.

“There are two stages of bidding. The first involves an expression of interest in bidding. The last date for this is May 31. The ones who succeed in this will be asked to present a financial bid. We are seeing a lot of excitement about the sale. However, if the required amount is not met, we will decide whether the sale will take place or not,” Mr. Choubey told ANI.

The Ministry official assured that the employees of the national carrier would not be ignored and would be safeguarded at all times.

The Centre had in March this year, appointed Ernst & Young LLP India (EY) to be its transaction advisor for the task of advising and managing the proposed strategic disinvestment of the national carrier by transferring the management control and 76 percent equity share capital sale owned by the government.

As per the reports, in March last year, the state-owned Air India is currently in debt to the tune of Rs. 500 billion and a total loss of Rs. 57.6 billion.

Unable to control the finances after being in such a great loss, the government at the Centre came up with the idea of selling off the stake owned by the government which in fact held the majority stake in the airlines.

But despite the idea, when the airlines were put for sale and bids were invited, there seemed to be no interest shown by the business bigwigs.

Many times the loss-making national carrier had to borrow again and again from the Centre. But the carrier was not able to recover from its financial loss.

Despite the attempt by the government for disinvestment of the states that belonged to the government in the national carrier, there seems to be no hope of ray for the national carrier to be sold out.

Compared to that with private carriers, they are able to manage their corporates without any such loss. There must be some management issues that are bringing the national carrier down.

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