After China’s successful bid to buy majority share in Pireaus Port Authority, now India’s GMR Infrastructure Ltd is said to have an interest in the construction bid of the Kasteli Airport in Crete.
GMR Infrastructure Ltd is headquartered in Bengaluru and operates New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad and is active in power generation, mining and exploration, highway and infrastructure development, as well as development and maintenance of airports, among others.
According to sources cited by Reuters, GMR has requested and received special authorization from India’s Civil Aviation Ministry to participate in the international bidding contest for the development of an Heraklion airport.
Besides the infrastructure projects in India, GMR Group also has a global presence with assets and projects in several countries including Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia, Singapore, the Maldives and the Philippines, where it operates the Mactan Cebu Airport.
Kasteli airport, a 850-million-euro project, is set to be operational in 2018 and expected to become Greece’s fourth-biggest airport in terms of traffic, replacing Crete’s outdated Nikos Kazantzakis airport in Heraklion.
