THE government hopes to conclude negotiations with the preferred bidder for the building and operation of the island’s new airport at Larnaca and the upgrading of the one at Paphos by the end of this month, head negotiator Lazaros Savvides said yesterday.
“We have informed the new Communications and Works Minister of the procedures until now,” Savvides said, adding there would be a meeting with the minister again some time next week to discuss strategy.
“We hope to be able to conclude by the end of the month,” he said.
Reports have been rife that the airports could be facing chaos for the summer season, as the government, which it waiting to sign with a new operator, has stopped upgrading the airport in order to save on costs.
Under the terms of the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract, whoever is awarded the contract will take over the operation of the island’s existing airports immediately while constructing the new one at Larnaca.
The £200 million BOT project is already almost a year behind schedule and construction is nowhere near starting until the government manages to reach a deal with preferred bidder Alterra Consortium or move on to the second preferred bidder Hermes Consortium.
The negotiations began with Alterra in January, and should have been completed by April, giving the new operator time to focus on the existing operations and making sure the airports were functional for summer.
However, the talks are taking longer than expected, although both sides in the negotiations deny that they have run into trouble.
A spokesman for Alterra told the Cyprus Mail the talks were continuing, but he did not know when they would end. He said they were not “in danger of collapse”.
The spokesman confirmed that they were due to take over the operation of the airports from the day after they sign with the government, while at the same time beginning construction on the new buildings.
“But for the time being we are concentrating on the negotiations,’ he said. “When these are completed we will start thinking about other things. One step at a time.”
Responding to questions on the current operation of the airports, Savvides said the government had already invested hundreds of thousands to upgrade them. He said at this point it would take months to replace or renew any equipment that needed replacing, as this could only be done through the tenders procedure.
He said that by July 1 it was hoped that everything would be sorted out if the negotiations with Alterra panned out into a contract.
It is believed that one of the concerns Alterra had was that the Civil Aviation Authority, which runs the airports, had failed to pay current suppliers, intending to leave those contracts to the new operators.
