Kuwait’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has said it plans $8bn-worth of infrastructure projects to support a new airport  in the northern part of the country.

These projects include infrastructure work for the airport, a new logistics hub as well as aircraft maintenance and services centre.

The planned new airport, which has a budget estimated at $12bn, will have the capacity to handle up to 25 million passengers a year.

The government would allocate the land for the airport and the private sector would build, operate and manage the facility.

Kuwait International airport handled 13.7 million passengers in 2017, an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2016 and the volume of its air cargo rose to 241,000 tonnes in 2017, up from 195,500 tonnes in 2016.

Several projects are underway to revamp the existing airport.

The $4.3bn Terminal 2 is expected to be completed between 2020 and 2022. It has a design capacity of 25 million passengers annually and will replace the existing terminal, which has been operating beyond capacity for several years.

The standard operational readiness and airport transfer (Orat) process for Terminal 4 (T4), which can handle up to 4.5 million passengers, is also underway.

Under the initial plan, T4 was designed to augment the capacity of the existing terminal at the airport until the $4.3bn Terminal 2 becomes operational. However, recent developments indicate the new passenger terminal will now likely to be converted into a permanent facility.

In addition to the existing terminal and the new T4, Jazeera Airways’ $46.3m dedicated terminal is expected to become operational in the first half of 2018.

This means Kuwait International airport will have four terminals by end of the year, inclusive of the Sheikh Saad al-Abdallah terminal, a small business aviation terminal built in 2008, which Flydubai has been utilising for all Kuwait-bound flights since 2013.