Slovak government cancels planned sale of Bratislava Airport to Vienna Airport Consortium
UPDATED - Bratislava, October 19, 2006 (Bratislava-City.sk) - Slovak Government definitively confirmed that the Bratislava Airport will not be sold to an outside bidder.
"Development of the airport will be fully ensured by the state, we have outside resources and loans at our disposal," Minister of Transport Lubomir Vazny was quoted as saying by the SITA news agency. He said the government would take a more gradual path to developing the airport than had been planned by TwoOne, the winning consortium of a February tender for the airport's sale.
In September, the Slovak Antimonopoly Office ruled against the sale of the Bratislava Airport to the consortium led by its Viennese competitor, effectively preventing the sale from going ahead.
The former Slovak government led by Mikulas Dzurinda approved a consortium led by the owners of Vienna Airport as the winner of a tender to buy and operate the two largest Slovak airports in February 2006.
TwoOne, the winner, consisted of Flughafen Wien AG, Slovak financial group Penta and Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank AG. The consortium was to buy 66% stakes in the Bratislava and Kosice Airports for SKK 11.4 billion (about EUR 300 million). The consortium committed to invest SKK 9.8 billion (about EUR 250 million) in 2006-2010 - SKK 9.37 billion on the Bratislava Airport and SKK 415.6 million on Kosice.
The tender was accompanied by heated domestic debate over whether TwoOne is the best choice given that Bratislava Airport competes with the Vienna Airport, which is under 60 km away. Increasingly Bratislava has become a hub for low-cost airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair and the Bratislava-based Skyeurope, also servicing Vienna (with the Sky Shuttle).
"Principially, I would prefer greater competition between the two airports," Bratislava Mayor Andrej Durkovsky was quoted as saying by the SITA news agency on February 12. He said the City of Bratislava would lobby the government to be able to acquire a 15% stake in the Airport to have a say in the decision-making.
Other bidders in the tender included a consortium led by the Spanish transport company Albertis, Germany's Koln-Bonn Airport and Turkish operator Tepe Akfen.
At present the Bratislava Airport has a single terminal approaching its capacity. In 2005 the Airport handled some 1.33 million passengers, according to official data, up from 0.89 million in 2005. Kosice served about 270,000 passengers in 2005 up from 231,000 in 2004.
For more information on the Bratislava Airport please visit the oficial site or the Bratislava Airport Guide. For more information on the Kosice Airport, please visit the official site.
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