Kenya's main airport to start $100 mln expansion by Jan
Tue Oct 4, 2005
By David Mageria
NAIROBI, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Kenya's main airport hopes to begin its $100 million expansion and upgrade programme by January 2006 to cope with a huge increase in passengers, the Kenya Airports Authority said on Tuesday.
Kenya's government hopes to upgrade facilities at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), which is struggling to deal with a flood of passengers coming into the east African country as tourists or in transit from or to the region.
The airport was built with a capacity to accomodate 2.5 million passengers annually but currently handles passengers in excess of 4 million.
The government has earmarked $100 million for the project with $10 million support from the World Bank and the rest from internal resources and borrowing from local financiers.
Tenders for construction work were advertised last Friday.
"The constructor should be at the site by January," Dominic Kabiru, the spokesman for the airports authority told Reuters.
The expansion programme includes more than doubling space at the JKIA terminal from the current 25,662 sq meters to 55,222 sq meters. Aircraft parking will also be increased from 200,000 sq meters to over 300,000 sq meters, the airport authority said.
Industry players, led by national carrier Kenya Airways (KQNA.NR: Quote, Profile, Research), have longed complained that they were losing business due to JKIA's facilities.
The point was best illustrated last weekend after a cargo plane made an emergency landing and blocked the runway forcing airlines to divert flights to Mombasa, on Kenya's coast, and Entebbe, in Uganda.
The chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Giovanni Bisignani said on Monday at the end of a visit to Kenya that Kenyan authorities had told him that they had plans to put up a second runaway.
Officials said the plans were a priority in the "Master Plan" which contained longer-term projects.
"After the incident at the airport over the weekend we did realise the need for a second runaway ... what the incident did was to bring it onto the forefront," Titus Naikuni, Kenya Airways CEO, said at the news conference addressed by Bisignani.
The Kenya Airport Authority said it had made a pre-tax profit of 1.2 billion shillings ($16.30 million) in the year 2004/05 versus 40 million shillings the previous year.
The authority attributed the jump in profitability to a 900 million shillings earned from passenger service charge, improved revenue collection, additional business from new airlines and increased frequencies from existing airlines. The airport had run losses in the two previous years before the government changed its management.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.