Escalating airport levies and taxation hinder airline industry growth despite regional connectivity initiatives.
Escalating airport levies, surcharges and high taxation are identified as principal constraints on the domestic airline industry, impeding commercial viability and constraining capacity expansion. The report emphasises that existing airport infrastructure has not kept pace with rapid growth in passenger volumes and aircraft movements, creating urgent operational and investment challenges that must be addressed to realise sector potential.

IndAS alignment: draft amendment requires cost records and audit to reflect IndAS recognition and measurement, affecting spares, grants and depreciation.
The draft amendments align cost record recognition, measurement and disclosure with Indian Accounting Standards and Companies Act provisions by: treating qualifying spare parts and standby equipment as property, plant and equipment for recognition and depreciation under IndAS; requiring that subsidies, grants or incentives related to specific cost elements be reduced from those costs and, where recognised as deferred income under IndAS, be reduced in the financial year when the deferred income is recognised; clarifying employee cost to include employer cost of retirement benefits while excluding re-measurements in other comprehensive income for IndAS entities; and aligning depreciation/amortisation measurement to statutory and IndAS principles.

Base year revision of wholesale price index aligns WPI with other macroeconomic series and updates methodology.
Revision of the Wholesale Price Index base year aligns the index with other macroeconomic series and updates its methodology: the basket and weighting structure were revised, the item count and price quotations increased, indirect taxes were removed to approximate a Producer Price Index, a new Food Index was introduced, seasonality for fruits and vegetables was extended, item-level aggregation now uses Geometric Mean, and data collection was modernized with online submission and computer-assisted interviewing.