A new international airport will be built in Tbilisi, in particular, in Vaziani. Such a statement made today the Prime Minister of Georgia at the Government meeting.

“The session of the Economic Council was held yesterday, where we made the most important decision on the implementation of the new mega-project. In particular, a new international airport will be built in Tbilisi.

Today’s airport capacity is approximately 4-4.5 million passengers. You know that we have very positive dynamics in the field of tourism. A rapid and consistent increase in the number of tourists and visitors is expected in the future, which must be supported by infrastructure.

We considered 2 alternative options. One option involved expanding the existing airport. Second - to build a new airport in Vaziani. The cost of expansion was approximately USD 900 million, the cost of building a new one was USD 1 billion 260 million. The expansion allowed us to increase the passenger flow to a maximum of 15 million passengers and there was no prospect of further development.

As for the construction of the new airport, this allows us to increase the number of passengers to 19 million, with the prospect of further expansion. The new airport will be in full compliance with the highest modern standards. Considering many factors, we made a decision to build a new airport.

Projecting and tender procedures will be completed in 2025. After that, in a few years, Tbilisi will have a completely new, ultra-modern airport. This decision will have a very serious economic effect. According to our calculations, the growth of the economy will increase by 0.2% point, which means that during the next years, on average, GEL 350 million will be added to our economy”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.