Spanish government officials today approved the sale of AENA, Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea, as well as stakes in 20-year-old concessions for operating Madrid’s Barajas and Barcelona’s El Prat hub.

Maximising commercial revenues is set to be a core responsibility, with opportunity for parties competitively bidding for the two stakes of 90.5 per cent, the Spanish government added. A second agreement, which involved a 49 per cent stake of AENA, was also approved by the specially appointed Council of Ministers.

The contract tender for Barcelona and Madrid and is going to open on July 30, with a decision coming in November this year at the latest. The winning bidders are then going to take over 20-year-long contracts in spring of 2012.  The successful concessionaires will be required to make an inital payment to AENA in addition to annual fee equivalents of 20 percent of whatever the respective airports’ revenues are.

For 2012, fees of €150 million for Barajas and a lesser €80 million for El Prat will have to be met.  Minimum bid levels of €3.7 billion for Barajas and at least €1.6 billion for El Prat have also been established. Recently, Spain’s Socialist government  has been active in selling assets while seeking to reduce debt it must issue in order to finance an alarming budget deficit that became the third-largest in Europe last year.