Third airport to be profitable, Turkish minister says

ANKARA

The Turkish consortium will pay the government 22.152 billion euros for the 25 year lease. DHA photo

The Cengiz-Kolin-Limak-Mapa-Kalyon Consortium, a joint venture of Turkish companies, won the tender for a third airport in Istanbul, the largest project of its kind in the Turkish Republic, promising to pay the government 22.152 billion euros for 25 years starting from 2017. Many say this amount is too large.

“Such a high amount of money cannot be promised unless a company has earned a strong reputation. I believe the winning companies of the tender carefully calculated how to pay for sure. The project is so profitable that the companies could take out much more than what they put in,” Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım said during a live broadcast on NTV channel yesterday.

150 million passengers

Yıldırım recalled that the construction of the first phase would take 42 months. The winning consortium will invest 10.247 billion euros for the whole construction process in total, to increase the passenger capacity to 150 million at full capacity. “Turkey will have one of the biggest airports in the world. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the center of the economic world has slid to the Middle East, especially to Turkey,” Yıldırım said, adding that Turkey would be a perfect transfer hub for the world’s airlines. Yıldırım noted that 1.8 million of the 2.5 million trees to be cut during construction works would be transferred. The third airport is the biggest build-operate-transfer project and PPP of the Turkish Republic. The Turkish consortium won the tender on May 3 by giving the highest price for 25 years lease.