Goa's greenfield airport project gets further push

The Goa Government today approved a plan to float a request for proposals as well as a draft concession agreement for the construction of a greenfield airport at Mopa which is likely to cost Rs 3,300 crore.
The proposal was cleared by the Cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar.
Announcing this after emerging from a brief meeting of the Cabinet, Parsekar said documents are being legally vetted and would be published soon.
"In October last year, we floated a request for qualification (RFQ) and as a result of that process, five bidders were selected as technically qualified. These bidders will be eligible to bid where the sole bid parameter will be the percentage of revenue they are willing to share with the State Government," he said.

The five firms technically qualified to build the airport are GMR Infrastructure, Airports Authority of India (AAI), Essel Infrastructure, GVK Airport Developers Pvt Ltd and Voluptas Developers Pvt Ltd.
"The project is to build the whole airport as well as a six-lane road to connect it with the National Highway. The first phase will cost Rs 1,800 crore which will be completed by 2019 and cater to 4.9 million passengers," Parsekar said.

On October 20, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, in a meeting of its expert appraisal committee, recommended green nod to the airport.
He said the concession agreement includes clauses like the winning bidder will conduct training for local Goans at Government-run institutes in aviation services, pay Rs 150 crore upfront to the Government and deposit a performance security of 2% of the cost of the first phase (Rs 36 crore).

The tender will allow the winning bidder to operate the airport for a period of 60 years on Build Own Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis.
The Mopa airport is expected to run in addition to the existing Dabolim International Airport.