During today’s Budget Standing Committee meeting, it was agreed upon that additional discussion of the project to build a new international airport in Ulaanbaatar will be scheduled, with a construction completion target date in 2016.

The new airport is now under construction in a project being led by the Mongolian government and Japanese cooperation agency JICA.

A loan agreement of 28.8 billion JPY to implement the project was signed in May 2008, within the framework of official Japanese development grant aid. The issue of taking on additional financing was discussed at Parliament session of 2013.

Although initial discussion of the airport began in 2007, time has been lost in implementing the project, and members of the standing committee have mentioned that costs for the airport have exceeded initial estimates.

We spoke about the progress of the project and its financing with the director of the new international airport project's construction, N. Enkhbat.

The ASEM Summit of 2016 is coming up. Is it possible to open the airport before 2016?

We have announced tenders twice in order to select a company in charge of project implementation, but failed. So we lost a lot of time on it. Initially, the project was launched on June 25, 2013.  According to our estimates, the project should be complete on January 7, 2017.

As of today, we are a bit ahead in regards to timing. If we continue in the same way it is possible to complete the airport in 2016.

Total financing of the project is 560 million USD. What percentage of financing has been fulfilled for now?

The project started in June 2013. In 2008 we have received a loan of 28.8 billion MNT, or 245 million USD. Presently, our project is covered by this financing. In 2013 a contract was concluded above budget with a contractor, because in April 2013, we made a proposal to take on  an additional loan with the same conditions, which was approved by the State Budget Standing Committee. So we concluded a contract.   

All investment aside from infrastructure is being made 100 percent by the  Japanese side, so the project will be implemented within the framework of the loan.