The Ethiopian Airports Enterprise (EAE) on Friday awarded the Hawassa and Semera airports passenger terminals construction projects valued at 270 million birr to local contractors.
The Hawassa Airport passenger terminal which can accommodate 120 passengers at a time would be undertaken at a cost of 126,534,721 birr. The project is awarded to FE Construction Material Rental Production and General Contractor. The design is drafted by Bereket Tesfaye Consulting Architects and Engineers. It would take one year to complete the construction.
The Hawassa Airport runway was built by Yotek Construction and has been operational for the past four months. The airport accommodates Bombardier Q400 and Boeing B737 aircraft.
The Semera Airport Passenger Terminal Construction project is awarded to Afro Tsion Construction, which is already undertaking the construction of the 2.5km runway of the airport. The passenger terminal of Semera Airport, which was designed by K2N Architects and Engineers, will be constructed at a cost of 149,852,672 birr. The terminal will have the capacity to handle 120 passengers at a time. If all goes according to schedule, it will take Afro Tsion just nine months to build the terminal.
The contractual agreements were signed by Tewodros Dawit, CEO of EAE, and founder and CEO of Afro Tsion Construction, Sisay Desta, and owner and CEO of FE Construction Material Rental Production and General Contractor, Fitsum Taye, at the headquarters of the enterprise.
During the signing ceremony Tewodros said that EAE is undertaking several airport development projects across the country to meet the ever increasing demand for air transport. Tewodros said the enterprise is striving to increase the number of airports to 30 (25 asphalt and five air strips) in the Second Growth and Transformation Plan period.
Tewodros said the Hawassa and Semera airports passenger terminals were supposed to be built earlier but were delayed due to financial issues. “To compensate the time delay we have negotiated with the contractors and agreed to finalize the projects in less than a year,” he said.
Effort to secure project financing from foreign banks could not be successful. Hence, the enterprise is poised to finance the terminals construction from its own coffers.
This is not the first time when Afro Tsion Construction is involved in airport construction. It has finalized the construction of Jinka Airport and is now in the process of handing over the project to the client. Currently, it is also constructing the runway of Semera airport. “We are committed to build the terminal with the required quality and according to schedule. Since we are undertaking other projects in Semera we are not going to mobilize we have all the machineries out in the field,” Sisay told local reporters.
Fitsum Taye said that this is the first airport development project for his company, FE Construction. However, he assured the enterprise that his company would finalize the project within the short period of time allotted in the contractual agreement.
EAE is currently undertaking the construction of Semera, Hawassa, Jinka, Robe, and Shire airports.
