Pres. Ali to spend millions more on CJIA airport

Dec 01, 2022 News

…says ‘We should have had a better airport’ 

Kaieteur News – An additional US$750,000 has been pumped into the US$160M Cheddi Jagan Interational Airport (CJIA) but President Mohamed Irfaan Ali still wants to spend millions more for a new terminal.

“As I speak to you tonight we are already contemplating a Terminal Two because you have to get it”, said Ali on Tuesday while addressing guests at the 27th Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association Limited (GMSA),  Annual Awards Ceremony.

President Irfaan Ali

According to Ali, “The truth is we should have had a better airport but we know what would have happened with the last Government the entire project was messed up”.

He reasoned that his intentions for spending millions more to build a second terminal at the airport is to facilitate the rapid increase of arrivals into the country.

“By 2025 the projections are that we will be creeping past one million arrivals”, Ali said.

Ramesh Geer, CJIA’s Chief Executive Officer, was the first to raise the issue in 2021 that the airport might need a new terminal but the Government had never official decided that it is heading in that direction until President Ali said so on Tuesday night.

In August this year, however, Kaieteur News reported that Government through the Ministry of Public Works will be injecting another GYD$150M (US$750,000) into CJIA for “modernizing works”.

In an advertisement published back then in Kaieteur News, the Ministry of Public Works, invited for bids to undertake drainage improvement and flood control structures to facilitate these additional works, and the engineer estimated that it would cost some $150 million.

Bids for these additional works have already been submitted in September by some 11 contractors.

All new works being done at the CJIA fall under the PPP administration plan to ‘continue modernize’ the airport. In fact, it was Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill, who announced that citizens should expect more of their taxpayers’ dollars going towards the ‘continued modernization’ of the airport.

The Minister had noted that construction at the airport will continue because the Government has to keep making more accommodation. He had said, “We have to continue to making more accommodation, I think sooner or later with oil and gas sector growing and tourism growing and bringing in high profile tourist, we will have to have facilities for corporate jets, luxury lines…people coming here with private planes to go and do things, we have to keep expanding…”

Just recently Chinese Contractor, China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) completed its part under the US$150 million airport expansion contract.