DE UPGRA DELAY NMIA
US$100m fix on despite 70% traffic loss but new timeline sought
PAC KINGSTON Airport Limited, PACKAL, operator of the Norman Manley International Airport, NMIA, in Kingston is maintaining that its preCOVID commitment to invest more than US$100 million to upgrade the airport will be honoured, even as its parent company is negotiating with the Jamaican Government to review the upgrade timetable and capital spend following a colossal fallout in passenger traffic and revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mexico’s Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico SAB, or GAP – which translates in English to Pacific Airport Group – took over the Kingston airport under concession a year ago, in October 2019.
“We have just started negotiations with the Government but I can share that PACKAL is committed to honouring all that we offered before COVID,” CEO Fernando Vistrain Lorence told the Financial Gleaner, while declining to disclose the precise nature of the revision being sought in the talks.
In its third quarter financials to September, GAP, which operates 12 airports in Mexico, as well as the NMIA and the Sangster International
Airport in Montego Bay, reported that in the three months, passenger traffic plummeted by more than six million or 52 per cent across its 14 facilities compared to the corresponding period in 2019.
This resulted in a comprehensive loss of 1.2 billion pesos (US$60 million) or an earnings decline of more than 81 per cent over the quarter, even though for the nine months to September, total revenues were down by only 18 per cent. This included a 33 per cent drop in aeronautical revenues from airlines, while non-aeronautical revenues, such as income from airport shop rentals, decreased by US$50 million or 36 per cent.
Vistrain said that in the nine-month period,