Sri Lanka to construct second terminal for Bandaranaike International Airport by 2022
Plans for the construction of a second terminal at Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) have been renewed in hopes of completing construction by 2022, The Sunday Morning Business has reported.
The terminal is to be fast-tracked with a committee appointed to resolve said concerns, according to a senior Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Ltd. (AASL) official.
The renewed focus on the second terminal comes as the plan of constructing a smaller terminal in the interim to compensate for the delay of the main terminal has been abandoned due to a legal battle, the news report stated.
Accordingly, the committee appointed by AASL hopes to negotiate a lower cost with the Japanese bidders, with a 2022 timeline in mind.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is the fund provider of the project, and one of its main conditions was that the construction be given to a Japanese company.
The BIA has more than 170 aircraft movements per day, including an average of more than 60 movements of heavy aircraft per day.
According to the annual reports of AASL, the airport experiences heavy congestion in both arrival and departure zones, as well as vehicular traffic, particularly during peak hours, and passenger arrivals grow 5-6% year-on-year.
The new terminal is expected to be up by 2022 and will handle a passenger capacity of nine million as initially planned, bringing the total BIA terminals’ capacity to 15 million.
Accordingly, the new terminal building would feature the addition of 96 check-in counters, eight baggage claim belts, seven baggage make-up carousels, 16 contact boarding gates with 28 passenger boarding bridges, and six bus gates. The scope also includes a capacity enhancement of the incinerator, water treatment plant, and sewerage treatment plant.
OSL take:
Sri Lanka’s airport and aviation industry is currently undergoing many developments making it a business/investment hotspot for foreign businesses/investors exploring opportunities in Sri Lanka. Foreign businesses could explore direct business/investment opportunities in Sri Lanka’s aviation industry and also look at opportunities in developing supplementary infrastructure facilities as well. Apart from that, developments in the country’s aviation industry will also help boost Sri Lanka’s tourism sector creating more business/investment opportunities in the tourism industry.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/25092019/Z_3 |