Navi Mumbai Airport: Further Delay In Takeoff?
Navi Mumbai airport may miss its deadline yet again.
The Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) project may miss the 2019 deadline set by the Civil Aviation Ministry, a senior official with the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd. (CIDCO) told BloombergQuint. CIDCO is the planning authority for the Navi Mumbai airport.
The proposed airport at Navi Mumbai, about 45 kilometres from Mumbai, will now be operational only by 2020, the official said, owing to delays in obtaining forest clearance and the re-entry of a bidder. CIDCO did not respond to a BloombergQuint’s query with an official comment.
The project has been stuck for nearly two decades now mainly due to land acquisition problems. And despite Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ recent assurance that the first flight from the airport will take off in 2019, there is still a long way to go before all necessary government clearances are obtained.
What’s The Hold-Up?
1. Re-Entry of Bidder
CIDCO has postponed the submission date for bids for the airport contract by two months, to November 7 from the earlier mid-October deadline.
The decision was taken after the ministry of home affairs decided to give security clearance to the consortium of Hiranandani Developers and Zurich Airport, which would then allow the consortium to participate in the bidding process. The final list of bidders also include Mumbai International Airport Ltd, GMR Ltd, MIA Infrastructure of France and Tata Realty.
The final contract may be handed out only by December 2016, the official quoted above said.
2. Pending Clearance From Ministry of Environment and Forest
The decision of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) to hold off on the final forest clearance for the Pushpak Nagar layout, a greenfield smart city around the airport, is another reason for the delay.
The core airport area to be awarded to the concessionaire is 1,160 hectares. Out of this, 292 hectares or 25 percent of private land, meant to be allotted for the greenfield smart city, is in process of acquisition. Pushpak Nagar is an important component of the airport project and will entail resettlement of about 3,000 households in 7 villages around the area. The layout also includes some forest land, for which CIDCO has sought clearance from the MoEF.
It all depends on how quickly the state government can comply with the stipulations laid out by the MoEF, an official from MoEF said.
But the process is in advanced stages and the clearance would be sought in about a month, the CIDCO official quoted above said. The pre-development work at the proposed airport site, including river diversion, shifting of extra high voltage lines that pass through the airport, and flattening or cutting of a hill will start in about a month, she added.
According to the plan released by CIDCO on its website, the airport will have two parallel runways and it will be designed to accommodate large aircrafts like the Airbus 380.
The company plans to develop the airport in four stages and the operations of the first stage consisting of a runway and taxiways will now have to be pushed to 2020.
The airport, which will be be developed through a public-private partnership (PPP) is estimated to cost around Rs 16,704 crore, according to information available on CIDCO’s website. This includes pre-development work, which is estimated to cost about Rs 3,400 crore.
The Need For Another Airport
The first plan to have a proposed airport at Navi Mumbai was conceptualised two decades ago. However, with exponentially growing demand and air traffic at the Mumbai airport, the need for another airport has only become more pronounced.
According to ‘The Sustainability Report-2016’ released by Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd., there is an increase of 11 percent in air traffic movement between 2014-2016. The number of domestic passengers has jumped by 31 percent while that of international passengers has accelerated by 14 percent.
Air travel demand in for the Mumbai Metropolitan region is poised to grow from current levels of 42 million passengers per annum to over 100 million passengers per annum by 2031-32, according to CIDCO’s analysis on its website.
The proposed Navi Mumbai airport will be able to handle a capacity of 60 million passengers per annum by the time it is fully operational, CIDCO added on its website.