The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has invited a consortium comprising Singapore’s Changi Airport Planners and Engineers (CAPE), Yongnam Holdings and Japan’s JGC Corp to restart negotiations on a government tender to build and operate a new international airport in Myanmar, one of the companies said.
Yongnam said in a statement that its consortium “has received an invitation” from the DCA “to enter into negotiation on the design, construction, operation and maintenance of Hanthawaddy International Airport (HIA) and its facilities on the basis of a public-private partnership agreement for a 30-year concession period.”
The consortium was named in August as the backup candidate to take on the estimated $1.1-billion project, after the Ministry of Transport picked a rival consortium led by South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp as the preferred bidder for the tender.
However, discussions with the South Korean consortium have since broken down reportedly.
A Ministry of Transport official told Reuters that the government wanted an airport capable of handling 12 million passengers. Incheon offered to build one with capacity for 10 million people, which was one of the issues that caused negotiations to stall, the official said.
“It doesn’t mean the deal with Incheon is off now. It’s just been temporarily suspended and the ball is in their court,” Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.
The HIA is projected to have an annual passenger capacity of about 12 million people and would be built at a location 48 miles northeast of Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial centre and former capital.
Yongnam didn’t state when its consortium received the invitation but sounded caution saying while it hopes to have a successful conclusion to the negotiation with the DCA, this invitation to negotiate with the DCA “may or may not conclude successfully.”
“The company will provide updates as and when there are further developments to the negotiation with the DCA.”
