India’s GVK, which operates the airport in the financial capital Mumbai, has won a bid to develop a new airport outside the city to ease congestion and cater to surging demand.
GVK outbid GMR Infrastructure the operator of the airport in national capital New Delhi – to develop the 160 billion-rupee (Dh8.81bn) Navi Mumbai airport, Mohan Ninawe, said a spokesman for City and Industrial Development Corp of Maharashtra (Cidco), which had called the bids.
The much delayed project failed to attract any bidder on two earlier occasions and Cidco was forced to make changes in project conditions.
The airport project will be carried out through public private partnership. The project implementing authority Cidco will bear the cost of pre-development works and the amount will be treated as a loan to the project developer.
One of the changes in concession agreement is extension to the repayment period of a soft loan from 11 years to 15 years. The new airport, first proposed in 1997 and approved by the government in 2007 is expected to be operational in 2019.
The current Chhatrapati Shivaji Mumbai Airport is publicly owned by the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL). It was opened in 1942 and it is the hub for Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir, Jet Airways and IndiGo, among others. It is also one of the busiest airports in India with passenger movement figures of 43 million between December 2014 and November 2015.
* Agencies
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