The Bandaranaike International Airport will have 42 gates from the current 14 following the three year expansion plan which will shortly begin and billed to finish in 2023.
This would be a massive Terminal Building which would house also a Railway Facility from the Colombo Fort for both departures and arrivals as well. The departures will be on the upper floor and the train would drop the departing passengers at the upper floor of the building while the arrivals would be on the lower floor of the building and they would be picked up from the lower floor of terminal building, he said. The Government will sign the Agreement for the construction of the Second Phase of the BIA with the contractor- Taisei Corporation tomorrow (12), Minister of Industrial Exports, Investment Promotion, Tourism and Aviation Prasanna Ranatunga said.
The Project, which will be costing around Rs. 37 Billion, will be funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will be billed to be completed in three years by 2023.
Meanwhile, Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Ltd Chairman G.A. Chandrasiri saidthat the current terminal building could accommodate only 6.5 Million passengers with the present capacity but was handling 10.9 Million passengers as of now. With the completion of the second Terminal building, there will be a total handing capacity of 20 Million passengers per annum.
A bigger apron will see that there will be parking space for 36 aircraft as well, he said.
He also said that there would be a state- of- the- art facilities which would be the latest baggage handling facilities, new immigration facilities, more space for passengers and new Immigration/ Emigration facilities.
Aviation Minister Prasanna Ranatunga last Friday warned Osama Construction Ltd of Japan that it would be blacklisted if it did not complete the Rs. 6 billion Apron contract at the BIA by May 31. The Minister had cautioned the Japanese contractor claiming that this was after the Japanese contractor had been given four earlier extensions.
If the contractor had failed, there would be complaints made by the GOSL to the Government of Japan, the financier of the project and the contractor would be blacklisted, top sources said.
The Japanese company has been asked to pay us demurrage to us as we cannot lose public funds due to the negligence of the contractor, G.A. Chandrasiri said. He said that a Special Task Force had been appointed to monitor the project headed by a Specialist Engineer and that the project was going on smoothly.
“Following the warning of the Minister, the contractor is now working round the clock with around 300 workers to complete the project by May 31, 2020”, he said.
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