Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) has extended the submission date to 5 June for prequalified companies to submit bids for the $1.5bn construction contract for the first phase of the Medina International airport.

The initial closing date was 15 December. However, this was then extended further to 28 February and then 2 May (MEED 13:3:11).

The submission date has been extended by one month “to provide bidders with sufficient time to finalise their bids”, according to a source at the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The IFC is part of the Washington-based World Bank and is acting as lead adviser on the public-private partnership (PPP) development of Medina airport.

Gaca prequalified eight companies to bid for the first phase of development in June 2010.

The prequalifiers include:       

• Airports Company of South Africa.
• Turkey’s YDA, Spain’s Aena Desarrollo Internacional, Spain’s OHL Concesiones.
• The Badr consortium comprised of Integrated Transportation Company, South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corporation, Central Japan International Airport, South Korea’s Samsung.
• Local Saudi Binladin Group, France’s Aeroports de Paris Management, France’s Bouygues Batiment International.
• The Saudi airplex consortium made up of the local El-Seif Engineering Contracting Company, Ontario-based Marshall Macklin Monaghan Group (MMM),US-based Airport Development Corporation & Houston Airport System, and Dubai-based Emirates NBD.
• Turkey’s Limak Investment, India’a GMR Infrastructure, Turkey’s Mapa Construction.
• The Tibah consortium comprised of Turkey’s TAV Airports Holding, local Saudi Oger, local Al-Rajhi Holding Group, Athens-based Consolidated Contracting Company.
• The Saudi-Malaysian consortium comprised of local Bakri International Energy Company, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad, local Almabani General Contractors with Italy’s Impregilo SPA and Saudi-Malaysian Riyad Bank.

The first phase of the development of Medina involves building airside and landside facilities at the airport under a long-term concession. Gaca is planning to upgrade and expand the airport to increase its passenger handling capacity to 14 million people a year. Medina airport currently handles just 3.5 million passengers each year.