The ground-breaking ceremony of the new terminal at the Ibrahim Nasir International Airport was held on Monday morning amidst the splashing of waves from the Indian Ocean, a slow cool breeze blowing in from the water and seaplanes landing and taking off at regular intervals.
The Maldives President, Mr Mohamed Nasheed and the Chairman, Malaysia Airports, were present at the ground-breaking ceremony
The project is being undertaken by a consortium led by the Bangalore headquartered GMR Group. Malaysian Airports is GMR's partner for the project which when completed by the summer of 2014 will provide a resort like experience to passengers arriving at this gate-way to the 1,900 islands that make up Maldives.
The modernisation plan includes building two taxi-ways so as to increase the number of aircraft that can be handled by the airport.
The project is estimated to cost $510 million and the terminal will be built on reclaimed land. The airport will eventually have a capacity to handle five million passengers annually.
This the fourth airport project being undertaken by the GMR Group after Hyderabad, Delhi and Istanbul. The consortium won the bid in 2010.