A SINGAPORE-BASED consortium has been awarded the contract to complete the construction of Hanthawaddy International Airport, which has been cited to service the growing number of tourist arrivals to Yangon.
A group including Singapore’s Yongnam Holdings, Changi Airport Planners and Engineers, and JGC Corporation of Japan were announced as the winners of the tender by the Department of Civil Aviation last week.
The tender had previously been awarded to a consortium led by South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corporation in August 2013, but was reopened in February this year when it was revealed that there were disagreements between Incheon and the government over airport capacity and how the project would be financed.
According to reports, the government wanted the facility to be able to accommodate 12 million passengers per year, two million more than Incheon.
The new project will be located on a 3,642ha site about 80km from Yangon, in Bago Region.
As Myanmar’s tourism industry sees substantial growth, the government has also announced plans to upgrade the airports at Yangon and Mandalay.
“I think Myanmar will benefit from a larger airport, as it will be able to receive more and bigger international flights,” Edwin Briels, general manager, Khiri Travel Myanmar.
“I expect that tourism will grow steadily over the next few years and it would be good to see direct flights to Europe and Australia, for example,” he said.
