The Egyptian Holding Company for Airports & Air Navigation (Ehcaan) expects to award the consultancy contract for Cairo Airport City by the end of September.

Ehcaan is currently reviewing bids from about 50 consultants and is waiting for a no objection letter from the World Bank before it can award the contract. Consultants were invited to submit expressions of interest (EOI) in the deal in May (MEED 21:5:10).

The scope of the deal includes the preparation of a development strategy and masterplan, conducting a preliminary environmental assessment and developing an estimate of the project’s infrastructure costs. The study also involves recommending contractual schemes for private financing of the airport city development.

The deal will be financed in part by a loan from the Washington-headquartered World Bank, according to Ehcaan. In March, the World Bank approved a $280m loan to help finance the renovation of terminal two at Cairo airport.

Ehcaan also expects to award the contract for consultancy services for the $400m renovation of Cairo airport’s terminal two. The selected consultant will carry out a detailed inventory of all airport and air navigation service-related fees and taxes, along with a review and comparison of the existing fees and taxes. The consultant will also have to draw up a forecast of future traffic growth at the airport and recommend fee increases and financial projections for the next 10 years.

Cairo Airport Company, a subsidiary of Ehcaan, prequalified companies for the construction contract for the terminal in August (MEED 5:8:10).

The expansion will increase capacity of the terminal to 7.5 million passengers a year from its current capacity of 3.5 million passengers a year.The construction work is expected to take about three years to complete and is scheduled to finish in 2013.