T

he government says the administrative process, including the West Java spatial plan review, of the much-anticipated Karawang International Airport, has entered its final stage, making the project available for a sounding out of investors next year.

Transportation Ministry air transportation director general Herry Bakti S. Gumay said the final administration document was currently at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister.

'€œThe administrative process of Karawang Airport has been at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister for the past few months and we are hoping to finalize every detail of this process by the end of this year because we need more capacity to handle air traffic,'€ Herry said on Thursday on the sidelines of the annual National Transportation Research Competition.

The new airport is being built to help support the country'€™s main gateway of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, Banten, west of Jakarta, which has been operating at overcapacity.

According to recent data from the Transportation Ministry, the number of passengers passing through Soekarno-Hatta reached 57.7 million last year, up from 52 million the previous year. The airport was designed to accommodate up to 22 million passengers each year.

'€œWe cannot wait any longer because the growth of the aviation industry is twice as large as the economy. We need more infrastructure. We expect to begin market sounding to investors in the first or second quarter of 2014 so that we can construct it immediately,'€ he said.

The construction of Karawang Airport was previously planned to begin this year, but as it had yet to be included in West Java'€™s spatial plan, it was delayed.

According to Herry, Indonesia plans to develop the new airport in several phases until it reaches its ultimate capacity of 70 million passengers, as it should be able to anticipate surging traffic in the future.

To reach its capacity, the airport will need four runways and two jumbo terminals.

Karawang is part of the central government'€™s Masterplan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Development (MP3EI) program and will be constructed under a public-private partnership (PPP) format.

The government has allotted Rp 32 trillion (US$2.78 billion) for 14 airport construction and expansion projects in the archipelago through the MP3EI program until 2025.

In addition, Herry said the government was now preparing the airport location permit (IPL) '€” that regulated airport configurations '€” of Kulonprogo International Airport in Yogyakarta.

State-owned airport firm PT Angkasa Pura I, also known as Angkasa Pura Airports, the operator of Kulonprogo Airport, has recently submitted detailed configuration data to the regulator.

IPLs are one of the requirements that Angkasa Pura Airports and its partner '€” India'€™s GVK Power and Infrastructure - should fulfill before conducting land acquisitions.

Yogyakarta has long required an additional airport as the existing Adisutjipto International Airport cannot accommodate passenger traffic that grows by 15 percent each year.