Aviation Sector Has Been Galvanized In The Past Ten Years, Says Nirmala Sitharaman

While presenting the Interim Budget of 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the government will continue to work on enhancing the airport infrastructure development. She said India’s aviation sector has been galvanised in the past ten years, and highlighted that the number of airports have doubled to 149. The Union Finance Minister went on to say that roll out air connectivity to two-tier and three-tier cities under the UDAN scheme has been introduced under the Modi government. UDAN is a regional connectivity scheme which was introduced in 2016 as a move to provide affordable connectivity to cities and remote parts of India.

She said, 517 new routes are carrying 1.3 crore passengers, and Indian passengers have pro-actively placed orders for over 1000 new aircrafts. Expansion of the existing new airports and development of new airports will also be continued expeditiously, said the Finance Minister. She added that the result of this new development will be better connectivity, and more flight routes, which will eventually aid in enhancing the aviation industry and will also significantly increase the number of tourist arrivals.

Nirmala Sitharaman also highlighted about the facilitation of air cargo in the country over the past four years. She said the government has taken number of steps in customs to facilitate the international trade, and as a result, “the import release time has declined by 28% to 44 hours at air cargo complexes over the last four years since 2019”.