The longstanding plan to extend the runway of Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) at its southern end by 300 metres looks like being delayed further as the contractor has not started work even though five months have passed since the deal was signed.

China’s Shanxi Construction Engineering Group won the bid to undertake the major airside and landside infrastructure improvement works, known as Package 1, at TIA after the original contractor, Spanish company Constructora Sanjose, was sent off for non-performance in December 2016.

Package 1 was awarded to the Chinese company last October, but it has not yet mobilized workers. The duration of the runway extension project is 21 months.

Babu Ram Poudel, chief of the TIA Air Transport Capacity Enhancement Project, told the Nepal Portfolio Performance Review 2017 last Friday that they had written a warning letter to the contractor. “We are going to issue another letter to the contractor on March 15,” he told the meeting.

If the second warning goes unheeded, the contractor will most likely get a termination letter, according to officials of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (Caan). “The contractor has baulked at undertaking the project complaining that prices of construction materials had jumped steeply.”

Sanjose and Caan signed a contract for the TIA Modernisation Project, now known as Air Transport Capacity Enhancement Project, in December 2012 with the completion deadline set for March 2016. Caan was forced to say adios to the Spanish company by officially issuing a ‘notice of termination’ on December 9, 2016 for delays. The termination of the contract became effective on December 27, 2016.

In four years, the project recorded a meagre 17 percent physical progress. In June 2017, Caan again invited bids to get the stalled project moving. It also broke up the project undertaken by the Spanish company into four different packages.

Package 2, which includes construction of an international terminal building and associated works, has already been awarded to a Nepali contractor under national

competitive bidding. Package 3 which consists of building a parallel taxiway and international apron is yet to be awarded. Package 4 consists of soil filling works on the northern side of the airport. The completion date for the $92-million project has been pushed back to 2019. The project, jointly funded by the government ($12 million) and the Asian Development Bank ($80 million in loan and grant), hit a snag from the start as the soil to be used as filler for the expansion of the runway was not available. Work was held up for a few days after the airport was closed when a Turkish Airlines jet crash-landed in March 2015.

Subsequently, there were further delays due to the 2015 earthquakes and fuel shortages. After the completion of the project, TIA will be able to handle more than 5.85 million passengers annually and accommodate bigger aircraft.