The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (Caan) has said that the process of awarding a new contract to resume stalled upgradation work at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) will be completed by June.

The $92-million TIA improvement project, or air transport capacity enhancement project, has been on hold since December after Spanish contractor Constructora Sanjose was dismissed.

“We are all set to invite bids this week,” Babu Ram Poudel, chief of the project, told a tripartite portfolio review meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Sunday. “Although we had planned to invite bids on February 15, it was delayed due to post-termination issues with the Spanish contractor.”

He added that the project would be broken into four packages—runway extension, terminal building, utility and soil filling works.

Among the four packages, bids for soil filling works will not be invited immediately. “We have planned to issue bids for soil filling and drainage works by April-end,” said Poudel.

“There are a number of issues related to soil filling works like the quarry site and transportation route that need to be sorted out first.”

The earlier project had been able to supply only 600,000 cubic metres out of the 2 million cubic metres of soil required for the expansion works.

The project’s completion deadline was first extended to 2015 and then to 2016, but after even that looked unachievable, the date was pushed back to 2018.

On December 10 last year, Caan, the executing agency for the ADB-funded project, officially issued a ‘notice of termination’ to Constructora Sanjose for non-performance.

The Spanish company had been given two deadline extensions and a number of ‘notice to correct’ letters, but it showed no interest in moving the project forward.

Subsequently, a Caan board meeting recommended that the agreement with Sanjose be cancelled as the project had achieved only 17 percent physical progress.

The ADB has provided $80 million in loan and grant and the government has put up $12 million for the scheme which has since been renamed as air transport capacity enhancement project.

The air transport capacity enhancement project, which has been declared problematic, has the longest duration contract.

Originally, the project was expected to be implemented in about 67 months following its launching in December 2010.

After the completion of the project, TIA will be able to handle more than 5.85 million passengers annually and accommodate bigger aircraft.