Navi Mumbai airport faces land hurdle

Mumbai: City and Industrial Development Corpo-ration (Cidco) is exploring multiple options including a soft loan and viability gap funding to developers to make proposed Navi Mumbai airport project viable.
These options are being considered with project affected farmers jacking up the price of land which is being acquired for the airport. Cidco had initially estimated that first phase of the project, which can handle 10 million passengers annually in the first phase, will cost Rs 5,260 crore.
Last week, Larsen &Toubro chairman AM Naik expressed fears that the Navi Mumbai airport cost may go up by another Rs 5,000 crore because of land acquisition cost and thus raising questions over project viability. Cidco is yet to finalise its revised cost estimate.
"The government and Cidco are jointly looking at various options to make the project viable. Currently, negotiations are underway for the acquisition of land. Further, Cidco will submit request for qualification document to the government's steering committee next Tuesday,” Pramod Hindurao, chairman of Cidco told Business Standard.
Hindurao said Cidco will issue request for qualification (RFQ) on receiving clearance from the committee. The RFQ process is used to short list potential bidders.
08/01/12 Sanjay Jog & Aneesh Phadnis/Business Standard

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Categories: airports Jan 2012, New Jan 2012