South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp. said Sunday that it has been picked as the preferred bidder for the development of a new international airport in Myanmar.

The company, which operates the country’s largest airport, said it will hold detailed negotiations with authorities from Myanmar on the size of the new airport and other matters related to costs and operations, with the final agreement to be reached by the year’s end.

Once an agreement is reached, the goal will be to open Hanthawaddy International Airport outside of Yangon in 2018, with IIAC to operate it for the next 50 years, the corporation said.

The airport corporation had formed a consortium with four South Korean companies last year, including Halla Engineering and Construction, and Lotte Engineering and Construction, to bid for the project.

The planned airport, located about 50 kilometers from the capital city Yangon, will cost $1.1 billion and envisions processing 12 million passengers per year. 

The Southeast Asian country said the airport was needed to cope with the anticipated flood of tourists in the coming years. The current airport infrastructure has been cited as being inadequate to deal with a steady increase in tourists. (Yonhap News)