GEORGE TOWN, March 12 — Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) has announced a pre-qualification exercise to appoint contractors for the Penang International Airport (PIA) expansion project.
The airport operator placed an advertisement on March 8 to call for pre-qualification for three work packages to expand the PIA.
The pre-qualification for the packages involved work for the air traffic control tower, new main terminal building, renovations to the existing terminal, pavement work, a multi-storey car park and local infrastructure work.
Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow, who shared the MAHB advertisement calling for tender and pre-qualification, thanked the federal government for approving the project and moving it forward.
“Penang has been looking forward to this project for many years and hopes that the airport can be expanded to cope with the ever-increasing demand,” he said in his Facebook post.
The approval comes after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim urged Putrajaya to speed it up back in February.
The last time the PIA was upgraded was back in 2009 and it was completed in 2013.
The PIA expansion project was planned back in 2019 when its conceptual designs were completed but it was delayed numerous times since then.
It is slated to start by the third quarter of this year and expected to take between three and five years to complete.
The PIA currently has a capacity of 6.5 million passengers and the expansion will increase its capacity to 12 million passengers annually.