Seven bidders have submitted offers, competing to build the Rs 4,200-crore greenfield Bhogapuram International Airport project in Andhra Pradesh.
Virender Singh, CEO, Andhra Pradesh Airports Development Corporation (APDCL), told FE the authority has received bids from a joint venture of Zurich Airport and a local bank, Essel Infraprojects in a joint venture with Munich Airport, Reliance Infrastructure in a joint venture with South Korea’s Incheon Airport, GVK, GMR, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) along with AviAlliance, and Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) in a joint venture with Mauritius-based I Investments. He said the the winning bidder will be announced by the end of the month.
The airport is to be developed in three phases at an approximate cost of Rs 4,200 crore. The winning bidder will develop the airport which will have a capacity to accommodate 6 million passengers annually at the end of the first phase of construction, growing to 12 million at the end of the second phase and finally, to 18 million at the end of the third phase when construction of the airport will be fully completed. The developer is to recover his expenses from revenue sharing and from property development rights in the area which will be allotted to them. The project will be awarded to the bidder offering the highest revenue share. The concession period is for 40 years and can be extended by another 20 years, Singh told FE.
The Bhogapuram airport has been delayed due to various reasons. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) had pipped GMR in 2017 to win the right to develop the airport but this was cancelled by the Andhra Pradesh government in January this year. The state government also expanded the scope of the project from a “mere airport to an integrated airport”, according to an official release issued in January.
AAI had won the bid after it offered a revenue share of 30.2%, compared to GMR’s 21.6%. As per the new tender, the winning bidder will now have to develop the airport as a hub for aircraft MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) activities as well as operate an aviation training institute. The airport is to be built about 40 km from Visakhapatnam.
Source: Financial Express