5 March 2014
The agency running the project to build a second airport for Mumbai says it expects at least 12 international consortia to bid for it.
The Navi Mumbai International Airport is to be a new-build public-private partnership; the construction phase of the work is expected to cost about $1.5bn.
The project is being run by City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), a development vehicle set up by the state of Maharashtra.
Sanjay Bhatia, the managing director of CIDCO, told LiveMint that he had already held meetings with Flughafen of Zürich, and meetings with UK operators, including Ferrovial, had been scheduled.
He said he expected to receive other bids from operators of airports in Paris, Frankfurt, Münich and Dublin, as well as firms as far afield as Turkey, Malaysia and Texas.
The site of Navi Mumbai, which has taken 10 years to assemble
The tender was put out last month, and the deadline for a response is 18 June. An announcement of pre-qualified applicants is scheduled for 5 August.
The airport is expected to be operational by 2020. Its capacity will be 25m passengers by 2020, 45m by 2025, and 60m by 2030, according to CIDCO. It will cover an area of 11.6km2.
Plans for its construction were first outlined in 1997, and the Maharashtra government gave its approval in 2007, but work was then delayed by difficulties in assembling the site.
According to the Times of India, CIDCO intends to build a smart green city around the airport.
This is intended to house 800,000 people by 2044. The state government has given the green light for work to go ahead on which it provisionally called the "Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area".
