The National Airports Corporation is proposing to the Government to set the opening date of the newly-upgraded Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport to September 2023.
When giving a brief overview of the K750 million Nadzab Airport Redevelopment Project, NAC acting managing director, Joseph Tupiri, said the project is 90 percent complete and should conclude by the end of August.
“The project contract was awarded in February 2020, so that’s a few years ago,” Tupiri said.
“Now the whole project is about complete; the terminal is about 90 percent complete.
“We are proposing that the Marape-Rosso government – through our Minister – to consider opening it in September this year, which should be a fitting celebration of our Independence.”
Tupiri outlined that the Australians handed Nadzab over to PNG as an independence gift, hence it would be fitting, “based on the economic cooperation that we have with Japan”.
“We are planning to do a three-day opening program, particularly to celebrate our tourism potential on the first day,” Tupiri continued.
“On the second day, we’ll probably do agriculture-related program and on the third day, the grand opening.”
The Nadzab redevelopment project is jointly funded by the Japanese Overseas Development concessional loan (ODA loan) and the Government of Papua New Guinea through budgetary allocation.
The airport was renamed ‘Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport’ to symbolise the cooperation and friendship between the people of Japan and PNG. ‘Tomodachi’ means ‘friend’ in Japanese.