The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) is working on plans to develop land around all the country's airports to create more economic activity and about 34,000 new jobs. The GACA recently signed a contract with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank to carry out the commercial, technical, legal and financial studies to find ways to exploit the land economically. The GACA has allocated two sites at Jeddah's King Abdul Aziz International Airport for private sector investment, including commercial and residential buildings, offices, conference centers and parks. The pieces of land are one million square meters and 1.4 million square meters in size. One of it is east of the Haramain Road – the Jeddah Highway. The GACA had completed its initial studies on the two sites and approved a number of companies and alliances, including local investors and international companies, to submit offers. The GACA set the deadline at the end of May 2010. All bids will be assessed by a specialized committee to select the most adequate in terms of long- and short-term financial returns. Airports Cities Execution of the Airports Cities project is based on a partnership with the private sector. It will involve a main developer and will contain markets, aviation and travel, tourism, hotels businesses, warehouses, residential complexes and light industrial activities. The GACA aims to exploit the vast areas around airports through private investment to raise the income of airports through non-aviation-related activities. In 2009 it had invited interested companies to introduce their qualification requests. The qualification has been completed and the second stage would be the bidding and negotiating prior to selecting the company to be awarded the contracts.
