World’s top airport-developers line up for Hyderabad project

Sources said that during the course of discussions with State governmenmt officials recently, the developers sought clarifications two aspects: One, whether the government will persuade the Centre to implement open sky policy? (allowing international private airliners to operate on domestic circuit) and two, whether the existing airport at Begumpet would be closed down?

The State government assured that the Centre had already been told the imperatives of an open sky policy for wooing private developers for theairports and, therefore, there should not any apprehensions on it. Secondly, the existing airport would be closed once the new one commences operations.

As per the schedule fixed by the State government, the bidders are expectedto submit their full-fledged proposals by July/August. Evaluation would take place by September and the selection of the developer would be over by December, 2000.

State Roads and Buildings Minister K Vijayarama Rao said that the government had already commenced the land acquisition for the airport. As the government has about 1,000 acres in Shamshabad mandal where the airport will come up, another 4,000 acres needed to be acquired.

The airport, to be located on a sprawling 5,000 acres, will have two run ways — each 10,000 ft long. It is expected to be ready in five to six years.

The project, cleared by the Union Cabinet recently, has attracted the attention of major infrastructure developers across the world.

Representatives of seven bidders who were shortlisted by the AP government’sconsultants — Tata Economic Consultancy Services and Speedwing (a subsidiary of British Airways) — visited the site and participated in the pre-bidding discussions with the government officials on May 5 and 6.

The bidders are: Ashok Leyland, SNC Lavalin of US, GMR Vasavi, ABB Airporttechnologies, Reliance Industries, Zurich Airport Real estates, Bechtel entreprises. One more agency, Rockers India (Pvt) Limited has been excludedby the consultants. The bids closed by February 15, 2000.

All the seven bidders have tie-ups with international consortia. Ashok Leyland has a tie-up with British Aerospace, Jarvis, South African multi-national Airport Carriers and Spanish firm Grupo Dragodas. GMR Vasavi is linked to Malaysia Airports holdings while Reliance has the backing of Cambata Internationals. Zurich Airports has an agreement with M/s L&T and Bechtel is being propped up by M/s DNATA, Dubai. Canadian giant Airport De Montreal is going with SNC Lavlin. Some of the bidders have left open the scope for further tie-ups too.