This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 19, 2017 - April 25, 2017

KAJANG: Findings of the feasibility study on the proposed Kulim International Airport in Kedah are expected to be announced in the next few months, said Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Othman Aziz.

“The study is ongoing and we should know the outcome in the next few months,” Othman told reporters after launching the Property Market Report 2016 yesterday.

“In general, the federal government is very supportive of the idea [to build the airport] but the final decision should not take into account of commercial factors alone. You also need to consider spillover effects such as developing cargo business and job creation,” he said.

Estimating the cost to build the airport to be RM4 billion, Othman said this covered two aspects.

“First is the airport infrastructure, and second is the surrounding connectivity such as highways. The cost should take into account these two major factors,” he added.

Othman, who is the member of parliament for Jerlun in Kedah, said the Penang International Airport is congested and there is therefore a need for additional capacity to cater for growing travel demand in the region.

“It is not about competing with [the] Penang airport, which is currently congested even after it underwent expansion. You can see this at the new terminal. The government has got to decide on the location of the new airport and since the Kulim airport proposal is on the table, then let’s study the feasibility of that,” he said.

In 2015, Kedah-based developer Bina Darulaman Bhd said it will be bidding for the airport project as “it is situated in its backyard”.

On the mammoth Forest City project in Johor, Othman said the government will not be offering any further incentives to the project’s developer — led by China-based Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd — to complete the US$100 billion (RM441 billion) man-made island.

“Not as of now. We can’t keep giving them incentives up to the point when we can no longer afford it. We can’t create policies which would cause a loss to the country,” he said.

Early this month, Country Garden said it will stop providing free flights to bring in potential buyers from mainland China to its sales gallery in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor.