Kenya's Airport financiers named

The prototype of the new terminal

Kenya’s government is in talks with four companies, including Standard Bank Group Ltd. (SBK), Africa’s biggest lender, about funding the construction of a $653 million Green field airport terminal, the Kenya Airports Authority said.

The state is in discussions with the African Development Bank, China Development Bank Corp. and Sunnyvale, California-based AAE Systems Inc. about funding 85 percent of the project cost, Managing Director Lucy Mbugua told reporters today in the capital, Nairobi. The first phase of construction of the new terminal in Nairobi will begin in July and is expected to end in 2017, she said.

“They have already given us their terms and we are in discussion,” Mbugua said.

Kenya is expanding its Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as it seeks to boost arrivals of tourists who are the second-biggest source of foreign-currency earnings in East Africa’s largest economy. The new terminal will have the capacity to handle 20 million passengers a year, compared with the 7 million that the existing terminal, built in 1978, can process.

From Bloomberg