GMR Airports Infrastructure, the county’s second largest airport operator, is bidding for two projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as it steps up its interest in expanding business outside the country.
GMR, which operates Delhi International Airport, Hyderabad International Airport and Manohar International Airport (Goa), has put in a bid for Terminal 2 of the Kuwait Airport. A request for qualification (RFQ) has also been made for the Abha airport in Saudi Arabia.
Rajesh Arora, CEO (business development and commercial), GMR Airports, said: “The Kuwait bid is an asset-light bid for 10 years of operations and management contract. And there are two other bidders.”
“We have submitted our qualification for the Saudi airport and the next process will take place as we will go along in terms of RFP. It is in the early days, but these are the two places right now we are putting our focus on,” Arora added in a post-earning call held last week.
GMR forayed outside of India first in 2014 when it took control of Mactan-Cebu International Airport through a joint venture agreement. This was followed by the taking over of Kualanamu International Airport in Medan, Indonesia which was also done through a joint venture.
GMR’s keenness to expand outside the country comes amid the Center’s plan to have more airports under the public-private-partnership scheme. The last round of privatisation was seen in 2018 when the Adani group won the mandate to operate six airports. Adani Airport Holdings is the largest airport operator in the country.
GMR is developing a greenfield international airport at Bhogapuram, Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh having a capacity of 6 million per annum. This is expected to become operational in March 2026. GMR’s third airport outside of India is located in Crete, Greece. The company won the bid to design, build, operate and maintain the under-construction airport.
Passenger traffic at the operational GMR-run airports jumped year-on-year (y-o-y) 20% in FY24 to 120.8 million, while the air traffic movements saw a rise of 12% y-o-y to 781,500. The company had a gross income of Rs 9,210 crore, during the same year, a growth of 27% y-o-y.