SEPANG: The Malaysian government, via the Ministry of Transport, and Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) today inked new operating agreements (OAs) for 45 years until Feb 11, 2069, said Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook.
Upon signing the agreements, the airport operator will continue its role to operate, manage, maintain, and develop 39 airports and STOLports (short take-off and landing airports) nationwide.
“Today is a historical day because of this signing of the extension of OAs between the government and MAHB and it will give MAHB enough time and room to make more strategic investments and decisions to upgrade our airports.
“Some of the salient points in the new OAs are that we give flexibility to MAHB to invest in terms of capacity building and upgrading of our airports based on the investment recovery model,” he told media after the signing ceremony here, today.
Loke shared that one of the biggest hurdles and challenges that MAHB face in terms of upgrading its airports is the lack of development allocation from the government as every year, the company, through the Ministry of Transport (MOT), has to bid for allocation from the Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Finance and not every year it would get the green light.
He also said that there are many smaller airports, which need to be upgraded periodically, for instance, airports in Sabah and Sarawak have a lot of potential but are currently under-capacity.
“So we need to upgrade them as soon as possible so that we can tap into the tourism potential,” he stressed.
Besides the OAs, the government and MAHB also signed the Land Lease Agreement.
The signing of this agreement follows the Cabinet’s approval in principle on Feb 2, 2023.
Out of the 39 airports in Malaysia, five are international airports, 17 are domestic and the remaining 17 are STOLPorts.