GMR Infrastructure-led consortium on Thursday won a bid to build, operate, modernise and expand the Male International Airport (MIA) in the Maldives. The contract will be for 25 years.
The GMR-Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad consortium proposes to pay $78 million upfront, one per cent of the total profits in the first year (until 2014) and 10 per cent of the profit from 2015 to 2035. It will also pay 15 per cent of fuel trade revenues in the first four years and 27 per cent from 2015 to 2035.
“We have bid for Male airport because of its high future potential. Since it is the only airport of the capital city and the government’s focus on tourism, it is frequented by high net worth individuals, who could be tapped for increasing the revenue from duty-free shopping,” Mr P. Sripathy, the CEO of the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd told this newspaper from Male.
Since it is a brownfield airport, he said the company will start making profits from day one.
With this, the group now has five airports in Delhi, Hyderabad, Istanbul and two airports in the Maldives in its portfolio.
Asked if the company is scouting for any other airports, Mr Sripathy said the company always considers acquiring good airports, but he declined to identify the airports.
This is the second airport that GMR will be taking up in the South Asian island nation — the first one being the modernisation and operation of the Hanimaadhoo airport.
Apart from the GMR-led consortium, two other consortia — Aeroport De Paris, France-TAV, Turkey consortium and Zurich Airport-GVK consortium had participated in the bidding.
GVK Airport Developers has reportedly offered $27 million as upfront payment, 27 per cent of the total profits in the first four years, nine per cent of the profit from 2015 to 2035 and nine per cent of fuel revenues.
The Turkey consortium offered $7 million upfront payment, 31 per cent of profits until 2014, 29.5 per cent of the profits for the remaining years.