THE resort island of Bali is set to have a second international airport, with the long-delayed project now being revived under the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto.
A senior politician from ruling party Gerindra, Dirgayuza Setiawan, said that the newly inaugurated president is fully on board with the project. “Pak Prabowo wants this project supported,” he said.
The second airport will be located in the north of Bali, in the Kubutambahan district in Buleleng regency – some two hours by road from Bali’s capital city of Denpasar – and is intended to ease congestion at the existing Gusti Ngurah Rai airport and overcrowding around tourist hot spots like Kuta, Seminyak and Canggu in the south.
About 15.5 million visitors flocked to Bali in 2023, close to the level in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic years, when tourism around the world practically ground to a halt.
Former tourism minister Sandiaga Uno had said that Bali needs a second airport in the north to facilitate traffic to the less-visited tourist spots there. He said the airport project, which was first mooted in 2016, did not take off during Joko Widodo’s term as president because it did not get enough political support.
“With the power change, I foresee the north Bali airport will finally be built,” he said in a reply to a query at a group breakfast in Jakarta.
Plans for the second airport had been made in 2020 under a non-binding agreement in which China Construction First Group was to finance and build the airport at an estimated cost of 50 trillion rupiah (RM13.8bil) with a local partner, Jakarta-based Bibu Panji Sakti. — The Straits Times/ANN
