Zhuhai airport risks closure over debts

A court in Guangzhou has ordered the seizure of the assets of Zhuhai airport, which is deeply in debt and may have to close unless it can find a white knight to take it over.

The closure of the airport - once dubbed the largest and most state-of-the-art in China - would be a severe blow to former premier Li Peng, the patron of Liang Guangda, the then Communist Party chief of Zhuhai who won approval for an international-scale airport in 1995 against the fierce opposition of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and then vice-premier Zhu Rongji.

Aviation analysts say an airport that size should never have been built so close to rivals including Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Macau.

The airport has only 15 flights a day, with 40,000 to 50,000 passengers a month. That is equal to the daily number of flights at Guangzhou's Baiyun airport.

Its annual capacity is 12 million passengers but last year it had only 570,000 - just 4 per cent of capacity. In comparison, Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, handled 33.4 million passengers last year. The SAR international airport processed a record 645 passenger and cargo flights on April 13 this year.

The Zhuhai Airport Group has debts totalling 1.7 billion yuan (about HK$1.6 billion) owed to many creditors, according to the Southern City News, the main one being Tianjin Airport Construction - under the Ministry of Communication - which built the airport from July 1995 to March 1997.

The airport was able to pay only 380.8 million yuan and owes the balance, plus an annual 10 per cent interest, according to the contract. The construction firm applied to the Guangzhou Maritime Court for enforcement of the debt.