Singapore’s Yongnam Holdings, Chan- gi Airport Planners and Engineers (CAPE) and Japan’s JGC Corporation have been awarded an estimated US$ 1.4 billion Hanthawaddy International Air- port Project in late October 2014, according to the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA). The project was previously won by Incheon International Airport Corporation of South Korea in August of 2013 but there had been some disagreements between the govern- ment and the corporation. It was reported that DCA had targeted the airport to handle 12 millions of passengers a year but Incheon had proposed 10 million visitors which was two millions less than expected.
Yongnam CAPE-JGC Consortium which was at first the back-up tenderer back in Au- gust 2013, was selected for the airport proj- ect on 28th October, said the report.
The upcoming Hanthawaddy International Airport is going to be constructed on the land of more than 9,000 acres which was previously used as an airfield during Jap- anese occupation era. The airport is near Bago situated in Bago Region, about 80 Ki- lometers north of Yangon. The government expects the upcoming airport to become the primary gateway to Myanmar, hosting millions of passengers annually. The new airport is going to become the fourth inter- national airport in Myanmar after Yangon,
Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw International Airport. And it is expected to be the largest among the four. The project is to last ap- proximately three to four years and antici- pated to be completed in 2019.
Myanmar has 30 other regional airports with eight domestic airlines of Air Bagan, Air KBZ, Air Mandalay, Air Asian Wings, Golden Myanmar Airlines, Yangon Air- ways, Myanmar Airways and Myanmar
Airways International (MAI) serving this sector. Among the eight, only Myanmar Air- ways and MAI are state-owned.
Myanmar’s Government has been focusing on upgrading the nation’s international air- ports and Yangon International Airport is one of them. Pioneer Aerodrome Services, one of the subsidiaries of the Asia World Group, is the responsible party to upgrade the Yangon International Airport from han-
dling 2.7 million of passengers to six million passengers annually starting from the year 2015. Mandalay International Airport is also going to be upgraded by the coopera- tion between Mitsubishi, Japan Airlines and SPA Project Management and is expected to become the logistic hub of the country. The Government is also planning to privatize the nation’s domestic airports in the near future.
