Kuwait plans new terminal as stop-gap for delayed airport expansion

Kuwait’s government is to build a new terminal at the country’s international airport that can handle 5 million passengers a year, as the Gulf state seeks a short-term solution for rising traffic before a larger expansion project is ready.

The new terminal will lift capacity at Kuwait International Airport to 10 million passengers a year, Yousef al-Fouzan, director-general of Kuwait’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, told Reuters.

It has tendered the project and has set a deadline of Nov. 3 for bidders to respond. Fouzan said construction would take around 15 months to complete, with the new terminal operational at the start of 2017.

Fouzan declined to put an estimate on the project cost.

The proposed terminal will bridge the gap until a much larger expansion project at the airport is ready – one which will boost capacity to 25 million passengers a year but which has already been hit by delays.

Turkey’s Limak Holding and local construction firm Kharafi National won the bid in August to build the new terminal at a proposed cost of 1.312 billion dinars ($4.35 billion).

However, this was the second time that the grouping had won the contract, having previously been selected in November 2014 before the government nullified the award without explanation.

Kuwait has planned tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects in recent years but many have been held up by bureaucratic delays, political tensions and allegations by some members of the parliament of corruption and inefficiency.