Kuwait’s Public Works Ministry has turned over the site for the construction of Terminal 2 at Kuwait International Airport (KIA) to the contractor following the completion of a 90-day mobilisation period.

The $4.3bn contract for Terminal 2 was awarded in May to a team comprising Turkey’s Limak Holding and the local Kharafi National.

The contractor is now initiating site surveys, with actual construction expected to begin once these surveys are completed.

According to a source familiar with the project, new tenders for the construction of the terminal, such as the information and communication technology (ICT), passenger air bridges and baggage-handling systems, will likely commence only in 2018.

The terminal, which has a design capacity to handle up to 25 million passengers a year, is expected to be completed in 2022.

In August, Kuwait’s Directorate-General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) awarded a $174m contract for the construction of a temporary passenger terminal building at Kuwait International to a team of Turkey’s Cengiz Insaat Sanayi Ve Ticaret and the local First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Company. The temporary facility has a design capacity of 4.5 million passengers a year.

A joint venture of China’s Avic International Holding Corporation and local Al-Dar (HOT) Engineering & Construction offered a low bid of $497.2m for package 3 of the airport’s expansion. This includes the construction of a new code 4F west runway, the extension of the existing east runway, a new air traffic control tower, parallel taxiways, access roads and other related facilities at the airport.

Kuwait International handled 10.2 million passengers in 2015, more than twice its design capacity. The number of passengers passing through the airport has been growing at an average compounded rate of 6 per cent annually since 2006.