Work on Bhogapuram airport to take off today

Visakhapatnam With the finalisation of EPC contract, GMR Group will perform the bhoomi pooja on Wednesday for the GMR International Airport at Bhogapuram, about 40 km from Visakhapatnam.

GMR Group Chairman G M Rao, sources told Bizz Buzz, will perform the pooja to mark the ground-breaking ceremony at a simple event at the project site in Vizianagaram district in the presence of his family members and senior executives of the company. This is one of the important big ticket projects for Andhra Pradesh during the past four and half years after the change in government, which is taking off.

GMR International Airport Ltd (GVIAL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of GMR Airports Ltd (GAL), is the concessionaire for the development and operation of the airport. This is GMR’s fourth major airport in India after Delhi, Hyderabad and Goa. The project will be implemented in three phases with the first phase envisaging to handle six million passengers per annum. Once fully operational, it is designed to handle 40 million passengers.

Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy laid the foundation stone for the project on May 3. The first phase of the project is being taken up at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore. The financial closure has also been completed recently. As the EPC bid is finalised, the process of awarding after obtaining internal approvals will be done. The R&R process is fully completed.

Sources said, at present the grant of right of way over airport land from the authorities concerned is in progress. The company received Rs 4,000 crore loan for construction of the airport. It informed the statutory agencies that it has received sanction from all participating financial institutions.

The greenfield airport project is expected to become a game-changer in bringing investments in several fields to the region and boost the tourism sector in a big way. At present, the Visakhapatnam International Airport is operating as a civil enclave at the INS Dega airbase of the Indian Navy.

Earlier, GMR Group declared that with an objective to enhance shareholder value by simplifying the corporate structure and bringing public shareholders closer to the airport assets, they are executing the Agreement and Scheme of Merger of GMR Airports Ltd (GAL) with GMR Airports Infrastructure Ltd (GIL). In this context, varied steps have been achieved paving the way further for the merger completion within the expected timeline of FY24.