Navi Mumbai airport may take off by end-2021
The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) and the GVK group have set end-2021 as the deadline for the commercial launch of the Navi Mumbai airport.
The two parties signed a concession agreement for the airport on Monday. The GVK group won the bid to construct the airport last February, but the award letter was issued only in October last year.
The state government was keen to make the airport operational by December 2019, but the concession agreement has extended the deadline. The budget for the construction of the airport is ~160 billion.
According to the agreement, the commercial date of operations for the first phase of airport has been fixed at 1,245 days from the financial closure date. This is subject to the timely completion of pre-development activities, such as filling and reclaiming land. The financial closure will be done in six months.
The airport will have an annual capacity of 10 million passengers in its first phase. It is being jointly developed by the GVK group-run Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) and CIDCO.
MIAL owns 74 per cent and CIDCO 26 per cent in the company developing the project. The initial concession period was 30 years; it can be extended by 10 years.
The airport development company will pay 12.6 per cent of its gross revenue and a concession fee of ~50 million to ~12.50 billion, over a period of 60 years to CIDCO.
“We plan to complete the first runway by December 2019 and the second runway by mid-2020. Operationalising an airport takes time and there are several clearances required, including some from the International Civil Aviation Organization. The three-year time frame for the launch is the upper limit,” CIDCO Vice-Chairman Bhushan Gagrani said.
“We have submitted an interim master plan. The final plan will be done in three months,” said a GVK group spokesperson. MIAL’s Executive Chairman G V K Reddy, in a statement, said, “We are delighted the GVK has got the opportunity to yet again display its technical and management prowess in the airports sector for developing and managing the Navi Mumbai international airport.”