Malaysian company offered to build airport in Kapshagai

Malaysian company ALM SDN BHD GROUP offered Kazakhstan Ministry of Transport and Communications to build a big airport in Almaty oblast, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the Ministry’s press-service. The foreign company confirmed its readiness to start construction of the new international airport next to Kapshagai town. The Civil Aviation Commission sent a letter to ALM SDN BHD asking it to make a feasibility study for the project. Besides, the Malaysian company is going to reconstruct the 104km-long Almaty-Kapshagai road and build tourist infrastructure along the road near Almaty. The road reconstruction is estimated at 64.4 billion tenge ($450 million). “This company is ready to make direct investments of around $5.8 billion to implement the project. The planned construction period is 5 years. The airport will be constructed in 3 stages. The first stage will include construction of 220 thousand square meters with the calculated capacity of 8 million passengers per year. Other 60 and 40 thousand square meters will be built during the next 2 stages,” Ministry writes. The Ministry also stressed that in case of the successful implementation of this project, the new and the existing airports of Almaty will operate simultaneously. For comparison, the total area of only the apron of Astana International Airport is 332 thousand square meters. Almaty airport rendered services to 3.6 million passengers in 2011. By Daniyar Bozov