CIAL raises Rs114.60 crore through User Fee during FY23

KOCHI/August 30-2023: The reintroduced User Development Fee (UDF) or User Fee (as is popularly known) has helped Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) ramp up its revenue during 2022-23 (FY23).CIAL raised Rs114.60 crore through UDF which has been reintroduced in the airport from April last, to take the total revenue from operations up to Rs759.37 crore compared with Rs403.98 crore for the previous financial year.

”The substantial increase in revenue can be attributed to the impressive growth of non-aero income, collection of User Development Fee (UDF) and the increase in aeronautical tariffs as per the approved tariff card by the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA),” a CIAL statement noted.

While CIAL charges Rs590 per international traveler as User Fee, the domestic traveler is charged at a relatively low fee of Rs272.

However, compared with CIAL, Thiruvananthapuram airport charges a much higher fee at Rs1262 and Rs598 for international and domestic traveler respectively.

Quite intrigue it may sound, even several frequent flyers are said to be in the dark about the user fee being introduced by CIAL after a long gap.

This is because there’s no mention of User Development Fee in the tickets, and instead it is mentioned through a code ‘IN’. Surprisingly, queries made by myfinpoint.com to travel agencies also couldn’t elicit a definite response as to whether CIAL has started charging UDF on travelers.

Government stake up to 33.38 pc

CIAL’s rights issue that raised Rs478.21 crore in March this year, including the premium charged at Rs40 per share, saw the shareholding of Kerala Government, the largest shareholder in CIAL, go up from 32.42 per cent to 33.38 per cent.

This has resulted from the additional shares the Kerala government received from the unsubscribed shares by the retail investors in the rights issue.

Even since March 2023, the shareholding of Yusuffali MA has also grown marginally from 4.499 crore shares to 5.79 crore shares even as the share capital increased by Rs95.64 crore, from Rs382.57 crore to Rs478.21 crore through the 1:4 rights issue.

According to a CIAL document, 13,372 existing equity shareholders applied for Right Shares and CIAL collected Rs564.04 crores as Right Issue application money as against the required amount of Rs. Rs478.22 crore.