GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, on Friday, commenced work on the expansion of the Hyderabad airport and announced plans to develop a mega convention centre and an Airport City.

Kicking off the celebrations commemorating 10 years of commissioning of the greenfield Hyderabad airport, GM Rao, Chairman of the GMR group, announced the launch of what he described as the country’s first “Smart Greenfield Airport City” and the biggest convention centre in the country with a capacity to host 12,000 people.

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao laid the foundation stone for the expansion of the airport which will see the development of a second runway and take up the capacity to 30 MPPA, nearly doubling its existing capacity. Last year, the airport handled 18 MPPA.

Hyderabad has been witnessing rapid economic growth and this is reflected in the growth of the passenger movement at the airport. Since 2014, when the new State was formed, passenger traffic growth rate has tripled from 7 per cent till 2014 to about 21 per cent year-on-year over the last four years.

After releasing a commemorative stamp and cover of the airport's decade of excellence, which saw the airport traffic grow from 6 mppa to 18 mppa, the Chief Minister launched the Hyderabad Airport City project. The Airport City is being developed as a theme based anchor-led city consisting of business port, health port, education port, fun port, logistics port and aerospace port.

Ahead of schedule

GM Rao said, “By developing the airport in record 31 months in 2008, five months ahead of time, we demonstrated our capabilities. This has transformed into a modern marvel.”

“The expansion of the airport is being taken up three years ahead of planned expansion and will have two runways when the expansion is completed with a capability to handle up to 40 million passenger per annum. However, the airport has the capacity to take up four runways and has facility to go up 100 mmpa,” he said.

Referring to the upcoming Airport City, he said it already has some major global players such as Tata, Amazon, CFM, Pratt & Whitney and Safran functioning from there. In future a number of other majors will join the city.

As per estimates, the airport ecosystem has made tremendous contribution to the economy and growth of infrastructure. It is estimated to have contributed about ₹7,600 crore to the national GDP and has helped create about 8,50,000 jobs in the State.

Skilled manpower

Coinciding with the event, the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, the CSR arm of the GMR group, inked three MoUs with Jaguar Foundation, Schneider Electric and Volvo Group to create a skilled manpower pool.

Lauding the effort of the Foundation, he said, “It has played a significant role by training more than 9,000 youth with more than 80 per cent of them getting employment.”

VAT on ATF slashed

In a move that could boost the growth of the aviation sector, the Telangana Government has slashed VAT on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) to 1 per cent from 16 per cent.

KT Rama Rao, State Industries and IT Minister, announced the slashing of VAT on ATF at the GMR Group event.

The Minister also announced the Government plans to set up a logistics hub and a dry port near the airport and transform it into a multi modal transport hub.

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