Saudi Arabia plans to expand its capital's airport three-fold in size within the next five years, a senior civil aviation official said Monday, as passenger traffic rises rapidly. The Riyadh airport is one of 27 in the Kingdom where traffic has reached 30 million passengers annually and is expected to double to 60 million over the next 10 years. The Saudi government is planning multi-billion dollar projects to expand its airports to meet this growth. “Terminals will be rebuilt and expanded to ... three times its current size,” Dr. Ali Al-Zahrani, Director Of Corporate Planning at the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA), said about the Riyadh airport expansion. “We developed a comprehensive master plan with a conceptual design for the four terminals that will raise the capacity at Riyadh airport from 12 million to 24 million,” Zahrani told Reuters on the sidelines of an event in Jeddah. Zahrani said he could not give an estimate for the project costs but said that it would either be government financed or that it would issue sukuk, or Islamic bonds, to finance the expansion. “We expect the project to be done within the next five years,” he said. Saudi Arabia is also planning a SR27 billion riyal ($7.2 billion) airport in Jeddah, its second largest city, and plans to launch sukuk within one or two months to help finance the project, the head of the civil aviation body said in remarks aired Sunday GACA President Prince Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Mohammed Al-Saud, told Al Arabiya TV that “We have agreed with the finance ministry to issue a sukuk which will be paid back by revenue from the Civil Aviation Authority, and it will be issued soon… I believe within a month or two.” Last year Saudi industrial conglomerate Bin Laden Group won the contracts to develop the first phase of the Jeddah airport, raising its annual capacity to 30 million passengers. The Jeddah airport is a gateway to millions of Muslim pilgrims who visit the holy cities of Makkah and Madina. It receives around 18 million passengers a year and is expected to see an increase of up to 30 million by 2013. Prince Fahd said he expected the airport to be complete “within three years.” Saudi Arabia is currently implementing multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects and revamping many of its airports to cater for the growing number of passengers. Traffic at Saudi airports has reached 30 million passengers annually and is expected to double to 60 million over the next 10 years, GACA states. Plans are also in place to change the GACA to a stock-holding company, he said, and it will constitute four companies, specializing in four departments including international airports, domestic airports, air navigation, technology transfer and information.
