Turkish government eases conditions for 3rd airport tender

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Third airport in Istanbul will provide an initial capacity of 90 million passengers a year, then the capacity to increase to 150 million passengers gradually. DHA

In order to spark the competition for the third airport to be built in Istanbul, the Transportation Ministry has introduced some amendments to the specifications, as a final touch right before the tender scheduled for May 3.

The changes made in the specifications include lifting the three-company limit for consortiums and the requirement for a dominant partner owning a 51 percent share.

According to data from the Ministry of Transportation, Maritime and Communication, some updates were required to enable more companies to offer their bids on May 3, thus making the tender more competitive.

In the former version, consortiums with a maximum of three companies could offer a price. In the latest update, the limit placed on the number of companies has been lifted.

Meanwhile the condition stipulating that “there will be a partner who has the business experience certificate, and the share of such partner will be 51 percent minimum” was also updated. In the newer version, the mentioned percentage became more flexible. Now the percentage will be designated by using a series of calculations.

The officials said they made these changes to make the tender more competitive and also in response to requests for such updates from tendering companies. The officials noted they did not accept other demands from the companies, such as the treasury guarantee of any delay in tender date.

The duration of the operation lease will be 25 years and companies will bid over the amount they will pay for the lease for the 25-year operation during the tender.

17 companies on track

The project will be conducted using a Build-Operate-Transfer arrangement with the cooperation of the private and public sectors. The state will guarantee the amount of passengers and tariff levels for a certain amount of time.

Until now, 15 Turkish and two foreign companies have bought the tender specification document which is worth 100,000 Turkish Liras. It was however not declared whether these 15 Turkish companies, which took the tender documents themselves, offered their bids alone or with a (national or foreign) partner.

Turkey’s many leading companies, such as Doğuş Holding, Sabancı Holding, TAV and İÇ Holding had declared their interest in the tender. Following the finalization of the tender approval, the first phase of construction is set to be completed in 2017 and will provide an initial capacity of 90 million passengers a year. Once all six of the planned runways are complete, the capacity then has the potential to increase to 150 million passengers.