Air India may be privatised

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said he favoured disinvestment of the loss-making state-owned airline Air India, to Private sector conglomerate Tata Group, who previously owned the airline 64 years back when it was nationalised.

Tata Group’s new chairman N Chandrasekaran has held informal talk with the government for buying a 51 per cent equity majority controlling stake in Air India.

JRD Tata had started Tata Airlines in 1932, which was renamed as Air India in 1946 and subsequently nationalised in 1953.

The Tatas already operate with Air Asia India with Tata Sons and Malaysia’s Air Asia, increasing its stake to 40.06 per cent from 30 per cent earlier by injecting fresh equity while Telstra’s share was reduced from 20 per cent to 10 per cent. Another domestic airline Vistara was also founded in 2013, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.

Air India’s revenue growth  has been mostly in single digits apart from 21.2 per cent in 2013-14