Tendering on for Navi Mumbai airport

The much awaited Navi Mumbai airport is on track and the tendering process being carried out by various governmental Maharashtra state bodies and other stakeholders will be over by March 2009, minister of civil aviation, Praful Patel said on Monday. Construction of the airport should start immediately thereafter.
The state-owned City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) which is the prevailing authority behind the ambitious Greenfield airport project started the process of inviting bids sometime in early 2008.
Cidco has appointed a US-based firm as consultant to draw up the global bid document and a detailed project report. The capacity of the existing airport at Santa Cruz will be saturated in 4-5 years and it has no scope for expansion. Passenger traffic is growing at an average 25% annually and more than 37 million passengers are projected to use the current airport by 2010.
The Santa Cruz airport cannot afford a parallel runway either because of space constraints. All these factors make the development of the Navi Mumbai airport critical.
The Navi Mumbai Airport is necessary if Mumbai wants to keep pace with growth in aviation traffic. It is expected to absorb around 10 million passengers in its first operational year which is expected to be 2012. This is then expected to double to 20 million by 2020 and 40 million by 2030.
30/09/08 Shauvik Ghosh/Financial Express

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Sep 2008, New Sep 2008