GVK issued letter awarding Navi Mumbai international airport project

A day after the Maharashtra cabinet's green signal, the City & Industrial Development Corporation on Wednesday issued a Letter of Award to GVK-led Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd for starting construction of the Rs 16,000 crore new Navi Mumbai International Airport.

This came nearly nine months after the MIAL was declared the winning bidder for the Greenfield Airport project coming up on 1160-hectares in the PPP mode with CIDCO.

While MIAL will hold 74 percent stake, CIDO will hold 26 percent, foot the pre-development expenses which will be later recovered from GVK, besides getting a 12.6 percent share in the annual revenue from the mega-project.

The GVK, which currently manages the Mumbai International Airport Ltd, had submitted the highest revenue sharing model of 12.6 percent per annum over its sole closest competitor GMR (which manages the New Delhi International Airport) which had quoted a figure of 10.44 percent.

"We are confident of providing yet another landmark airport for Mumbai. The invaluable experience that our team gained while developing the Mumbai Airport will be very useful and enable us deliver yet another world-class airport," said MIAL Executive Chairman G.V.K. Reddy, who is also founder-Chairman of GVK.

He revealed that the GVK plans to develop its airport business globally and the award of the Navi Mumbai International Airport project would serve as a major step in that direction.

The MIAL is a PPP joint-venture between the GVK-led consortium (74 percent) and the Airports Authority of India (26 percent), mandated for modernizing and operating the 75-year old Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.

Vide this initiative the GVK-MIAL has transformed CSMIA into one of the best airports in the world and the new integrated Terminal 2 has increased the capacity to serving over 50 million passengers and one million tonnes cargo each year, said Reddy.

--IANS

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