CAG Gives Restructuring Recommendation to Air India

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has recommended that National Air Carrier Air India must focus on recovery of total cost of operation, rather than variable cost alone for an effective turnaround for the airline.

Concerted efforts should be made for maintaining and improving the market share of the airline, particularly on routes where the presence of AIL has been traditionally strong. The Report, tabled in Parliament on Friday, said, “As a result of the considerable erosion of the benefits of financial restructuring due to high volume of short term loans of AIL, the value of which was nearly four times the cash credit limits laid down in the Turnaround Plan–Financial Restructuring Plan (TAP-FRP), the Company and the Ministry may need to reassess the requirement of fund envisaged in the Plan.”

In its recommendations, CAG said, “Monetisation of assets which failed to take off in the four years ended 31 March 2016 should be fast tracked. Efforts should be taken to ensure that assets identified for monetisation had proper title deeds and the lease agreements did not contain any limiting provision/conditions impacting their monetisation.

“It further recommended that considering the acute shortage of narrow body aircraft faced by the Company, the process of leasing additional A-320 aircraft should be expedited. All efforts should be made to eliminate abnormal grounding of aircraft. “Considering the significant expenditure of the airline on lease rent (for leased aircraft) and finance cost (for owned aircraft) for the period the aircraft were grounded, effective action should be taken for optimising the stock of spares, parts, components and serviceable engines required for repair and maintenance of the acquired fleet. Utilisation of aircraft, particularly the narrow body aircraft should also be improved to meet targets prescribed in TAP and contribute to higher revenues for the airline,” the report further recommended.