Call for new airport tenders

YANGON : Department of Civil Aviation says four international consortiums that competed recently for a US$1 billion contract to build the new Hanthawaddy Airport in Bago will have to resubmit bids.
South Korea’s Incheon Airport consortium won the tender for the contract, last August, with another consortium comprising of Singapore’s Changi Airport Planners, Yongnam Holdings Ltd and consortiums from France’s Vinci and Japan’s Taisei airports selected as back-up companies.
However, negotiations between the Incheon consortium and the DCA failed to materialise forcing officials to call for a review and later the decision to reopen the bids process.
The new submission must be presented by 22 April.
After negotiations with the Incheon consortium failed, the DCA said the project could not be completed by 2016 as earlier anticipated.
“New starting and completion dates will be announced in the near future after selection of the winning consortium,” he said.
Located on a 9,000-acre (3,642-hectare) site about 48 miles (77 kilometres) northeast of Yangon in Bago, work on the Hanthawaddy airport began in March 1994 when land was cleared, but stopped in early 2003 without any construction firm being appointed.
Hanthawaddy will be able to handle 10 million passengers a year once completed.
“With the new airport nowhere in sight, Yangon International Airport, will be under considerable pressure, even though it will increase its capacity from 2.7 million passengers a year to 3.5 million in 2015, and 6 million a year by 2019,” the deputy general director added.
Pioneer Aerodrome Services, a Myanmar company linked to the conglomerate Asia World, won the tender to renovate the airport, again with the Yongnam-CAPE-JGC consortium as the backup.
Mandalay International Airport, meanwhile, is slated to be renovated by Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation sometime in the near future, though that agreement has yet to be finalised, he said.

Sourced: ttrweekly