The Uttar Pradesh government is in advanced talks with the Centre for setting up two maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) hubs in Jewar and Meerut.
The state government has actively been pursuing setting up an MRO hub with the Centre as a competitive domestic MRO industry, which will cater to civil as well as defence aircraft and help airlines reduce maintenance expenses.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced measures to boost the domestic aviation sector and steps to make the country a hub for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of aircraft.
The Uttar Pradesh government is in talks with an American and a French company regarding setting up MRO facilities. Both the companies are ready, but have been asking for incentives such as GST relaxations. For this, the Centre needs to tweak its policies on MROs.
The MRO in Jewar will cater to bigger aircraft, while the facility in Meerut will cater to smaller ones. Also, there is no issue of shortage of land parcel in the state; so accommodating both the companies is not going to be a problem.
Also, Jewar International Airport in the National Capital Region has been conceived as the biggest civil airport project in Asia. An MRO complex has already been incorporated in the techno-feasibility study conducted by PWC and was the basis for global bidding of this PPP. The airport project has been awarded to Zurich Airport International for development and is expected to generate revenue of Rs one lakh crore in 30 years post operational in 2023.
Presently, most of the MROs in India provide only basic A&B check services. For advanced services, airlines use MRO hubs in South East Asia, Sri Lanka and West Asia. Most of the scheduled commercial airlines in India have long-term contracts with MRO service providers abroad.