Hanthawaddy airport agreement in final stage
A final concession agreement will be signed by the end of this year with the Japanese-Singapore consortium which won a tender to construct the Hanthawaddy International Airport north of Yangon, according to a government minister. U Thant Sin Maung, Myanmar’s Minister for Transport and Communications, told lawmakers during the parliamentary session on October 4 that the agreement for the new airport project, which is expected to cost US$2 billion (in its first phase), will be signed this year. Efforts to construct the new airport near the town of Pegu have been carried out intermittently for almost two decades. Incheon Airport Consortium, a South Korean conglomerate, won the first tender in Aug. 2013, but negotiations on lending terms for the project broke down and the government rescinded the contract. The new tender was awarded in Oct. 2014 to a Japanese-Singapore consortium comprised of Singaporean firms Yongnam Holdings Ltd. and Changi Airports International, as well as Japan’s JGC Corporation.
