Strong interest in NMIA divestment
Published:Monday | March 6, 2017 | 12:00 AMNeville Graham
International Finance Corporation investment officer Darryl Davis is indicating strong investor interest in Norman Manley International Airport (NMIA), which the Jamaican government is attempting to divest for the second time in two years.
The airport is back on the market after a failed effort at privatisation in 2015 when negotiation of a concession agreement hit a snag — none of the pre-qualified bidders followed through with an offer.
A new Request for Qualifications, or RFQ, was issued last month.
“We’ve seen good interest in that there have been, so far, 100 pull downs of the RFQ information,” Davis told Gleaner Business on the sidelines of the Infrastructure Conference under way in New Kingston. The two-day conference is being hosted by Development Bank of Jamaica.
The IFC is providing technical assistance to DBJ on the structure of the privatisation programme for NMIA.
Davis says by April the RFQ will be closed and he expects the divestment of the asset to be well under way in the fourth quarter of 2017.
“The RFQ will be out for about five weeks. We will be back in early April to help the government evaluate the qualification statements that have come in. From there we will move to the RFP [Request for Proposal] stage where we will negotiate the concession agreements. That will take another 3-4 months, so by early fall is where I expect that there formal commercial sign-off,” Davis said.
For the RFQ, candidates are being asked to provide information on their technical expertise, financial capabilities or financial condition and the ability to raise funding, Davis said.
The infrastructure conference wraps up on Tuesday.