A day after winning $270 million in compensation for the repudiation of its Maldives airport project, the GMR Group said that it is bidding for developing a new airport on Crete Island in Greece in partnership with the country's GEK Terna Group.
The scope of the project involves design, construction, financing, operations and maintenance of the airport for 35 years. The GMR Group said the joint venture was believed to be the sole bidder for the project.
"The bid submission is in line with the GMR Group's asset light growth strategy with value build up from this project coming to GMR more from leveraging the airport platform, leading to enhanced revenue based services, than just equity," a GMR Airports Limited spokesperson said in a statement.
The announcement on Thursday came a day after the Group said that an arbitration tribunal that was hearing the dispute between the Group and the Maldives government over the termination of the GMR Male International Airport Limited (GMIAL) had awarded $270 million in compensation. It covers "debt, equity invested in the project along with a return of 17 percent and also termination payments and legal costs."
The Male airport project, for which GMIAL had entered into a concession agreement with the Maldives government and Maldives Airport Company Limited (MACL) for modernisation and operation of Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA) in 2010, was terminated by the then government on November 29, 2012 for being "void ab initio."
In August this year, GMR Airports won a contract to develop an airport in North Goa. The concession period for the greenfield project will be 40 years with a possible extension of another 20 years through a bid process. The airport will be built under the Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model, the GMR Group said in a statement on August 26, 2016.
