January 25 (SeeNews) - Montenegro's government said it authorised the transport ministry to resume talks with International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the the World Bank Group, on launching the second stage of a tender for awarding a 30-year concession contract to run the country's two international airports, in Podgorica and Tivat.
Considering the fact that IFC timely met all its obligations concerning the organisation of the first, pre-qualification stage of the tender and is well aware of all tender procedure details, the government believes that continuing the cooperation with them as soon as possible will produce best results, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
The statement recalled that Montenegro decided in November 2017 to launch a tender to award a concession to run the two airports, aiming to improve their facilities and expand their capacities. In February 2018, it hired IFC to help it select a concession model and organise the procedure.
In September 2018, IFC proposed public-private partnership (PPP) as a good model for the management of the two airports. As a result, the government adopted a concession act, seeking from the future investor to make a one-off advance payment of 100 million euro ($109 million) and pay an annual fee equal to at least 10% of total revenue. The anticipated amount of investment for the first three years was set at 80 million euro at least, and at least 200 million euro for the full 30-year period of the concession.
In July 2019, the transport ministry invited interested investors to participate in the first, pre-qualification stage of the airport concession tender. It received seven letters of intent - from a Turkish-Danish consortium Cengiz & Copenhagen Airports; South Korea's Incheon International Airport Corporation; India's GMR Airports Limited; Turkish-French consortium Groupe ADP-TAV Airports; Luxembourg's Corporation America Airports; Turkey's Limak Holding; and a consortium of DDA International-Bouygues Batiment International-Marguerite-TIIC from Ireland, France and Luxembourg.
After reviewing their offers, Montenegro qualified four bidders for the next stage of the tender: Incheon International; GMR Airports; Groupe ADP-TAV Holding; and Corporation America Airports. In March 2020, GMR informed the tender commission it was withdrawing from the competition.
In October 2021, the transport ministry held a news conference with the remaining three qualified bidders, where they were able to present their view and plans on the management of the airports. Back then, all interested parties confirmed their readiness to participate in the next stage of the tender, apart from Incheon which asked the Montenegrin government to consider lowering or scrapping altogether the required one-off concession fee.
The airports in the Adriatic town of Tivat and in the capital Podgorica served 2.51 million passengers combined in 2023, up from 1.92 million in 2022.
The state-owned operator of the two airports, Aerodromi Crne Gore, has said it expects to post close to 10 million euro net profit in 2023, up from 2.4 million euro in 2022.
($ = 0.917 euro)