Saudi Airports set for major development step

With new Islamic finance in place for the development of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabian airports are to get another development boost with a planned expansion of Riyadh's main airport

News agency Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia plans to expand its capital's airport three-fold in size within the next five years as passenger traffic rises rapidly,it quoted a senior civil aviation official as saying.

Saudi Arabia's airport traffic has reached 50 million passengers annually and is expected to exceed 80 million within the next 10 years, the official said. The country has 27 airports and has already been working steadily to expand the numbers and standards of regional airports amongst criticism from the government tha the progress is not happening quickly enough.

Ali al-Zahrani, director general for corporate planning at the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) told Reuters ; "We developed a comprehensive master plan with a conceptual design for the four terminals that will raise the capacity at Riyadh airport from 12 million to 24 million."

Zahrani said he could not give an estimate for the project costs but said that it would either be government financed or that it would issue sukuk, or Islamic bonds, to finance the expansion.