Kolkata Airport Upgrade

India’s largest construction company, firms from Canada and Turkey as well as an Italian-Thai joint venture have bid for the Rs 1,942 crore modernization project of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. All three international firms have Indian partners.While the Indian firms will have to meet the financial norms, the foreign partner will bring expertise to the table.Eleven companies had initially shown interest in the airport modernization project and six — Hervé Pomerleau Canada-Consolidated Construction Consortium Ltd, Italian-Thai Development Public Co Ltd-Cementation India Ltd, TAV Tepe Akfen Yatirim ve Isletme AS-Punj Lloyd Ltd and Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Laing O’Rourke UK-Simplex Infrastructures Ltd and CSCHK Hong Kong-Soma Enterprise — were shortlisted by Airports Authority of India. The last two did not submit the bid. Four parties did so. The bank guarantees will now be verified. Bids will be opened once the bidding process for Chennai airport is completed on June 23.Though consortiums can bid for projects at both the Chennai and Kolkata airports, two different companies will be selected for the two schemes. Hence, the decision to keep the selection process in abeyance till the deadline for submission of Chennai airport bids.The AAI will also appoint a project management consultant to oversee the implementation of the modernization project on a turnkey basis. Leading firms like USbased Louis Berger Group have applied for becoming the consultants.
The project involves construction of a new integrated terminal building to handle 20 million passengers. The Rs 1,600-crore facility is due to be commissioned by 2011. Along with existing capacity of 4.942 million passengers (0.882 million, international and 4.06 million, domestic), the total handling capacity would rise to 24.942 million passengers that will be saturated by 2015-16. Subsequently, total capacity will be increased to 39.32 million in phase-II and 56.13 million in phase-III.Now with all hurdles at government-level cleared, work can begin after the monsoon if the principal contractor is selected later this month.