He said large investments in the order of Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) would be needed for this purpose.

In order to enhance the safety of aircraft operation, the infrastructure at the airports is being improved and steps are also being taken to upgrade the air navigation facilities.

This exercise would be continued and other metro and non-metro airports would be modernised and restructured, he said adding "We have plans to develop our airports and air navigation services to world class standards".

New airports in the private sector are also being developed at Bangalore and Hyderabad to meet the traffic growth requirements of these cities, the Minister said.

In an effort to enhance air navigation facility, India is developing its own space-based augmentation system 'Gagan'. This system jointly developed by the Airports Authority of India and Indian Space Research Organisation, could be used not only in the Indian airspace but also in the region around India, he said.

."We hope the prototype of the technology demonstration system will be ready by 2006 and thereafter the full operational system will be developed", Patel said.

India is on the air corridor from East to West and a large number of flights over-fly and utilise the air navigation and airport facilities in the country, he said.

The domestic traffic is increasing at the rate of more than 20 per cent per annum and international traffic to and from India is increasing at the rate of nearly 17 per cent per annum.

Efforts are thus being made to develop infrastructure to meet this high growth of traffic, Patel said.