SINGAPORE, Feb 4 — A consortium including Singapore’s Changi Airport Planners and Yongnam Holdings Inc has been invited by the government of Myanmar to re-enter negotiations to build and operate a new international airport in the country.

In August, a consortium led by South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp was named as the preferred bidder to build Hanthawaddy International Airport, but those discussions have since broken down according to a person familiar with the matter.

Yongnam said in a statement that its consortium, which also includes Japan’s JGC Corp, has been asked by Myanmar’s Department of Civil Aviation to enter negotiations for a 30-year public-private partnership to build, run and maintain the airport. It was named in August as the back-up bidder to the Korean group.

The order was estimated in August to be worth around US$1 billion (RM3.3 billion) and would oversee the construction of an airport near Yangon, Myanmar’s old capital and commercial centre, that could handle an annual passenger capacity of around 12 million people. — Reuters