Paraguay's Asunción airport upgrade to be awarded next week

Paraguayan authorities are set to award the tender for the modernization of Silvio Pettirossi airport in Asunción next week under the PPP model, the president of national civil aeronautics agency Dinac, Luis Aguirre was reported as saying by local newspaper La Nación.

Three competing offers have been submitted by Argentine firm Cedicor, French company Vinci and Spain's Sacyr-Agunsa. The 30-year contract involves total investments of US$149mn to be carried out in three stages.

"We are in the middle of the process to evaluate the three bids we have. This week the technical part ends and we will call for the opening of economic offers next week. Works will begin in February or March of 2017 and the first stage would be completed in two years," Aguirre was quoted as saying by the daily.

The modernization project will be the first public project in the country to be awarded under a PPP scheme.

Aguirre added that on Tuesday (Oct 18) a regional workshop was held involving several key organizations in the aviation industry, including Óscar Quesada, deputy director of the regional international civil aviation organization (OACI) in Lima, Myoung-Suk Hwang, the director of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (Koica) in Paraguay, and counterpart María José Taveira from international air transport association IATA, among others.

Taveira assured that aviation is the way to connect the world, "We support the process for the construction of the new terminal and Paraguay's geographic position is ideal for a logistics center."

The project involves the construction and concession of a second passenger terminal at the existing Silvio Pettirossi airport, in addition to the concession of the entire airport. The works will increase the size of the passenger terminal and the airport apron, after which its passenger-handling capacity will increase to 3.3mn per year, up from the current capacity of 915,000.