The government has told lawmakers that it has decided to suspend its plan to convert part of the Taipa Ferry Terminal into the adjacent airport’s Terminal 2 because it now expects the airport’s current capacity to still be able to handle its annual passenger movement for the next few years, considering that the post-pandemic recovery of the airport’s passenger movement has been “relatively slow”.
The legislature’s Follow-up Committee for Public Finance Affairs held a meeting yesterday where its members concluded their discussion on a newly drafted report detailing the government’s latest implementation of its public project investment plans. The committee’s president, Wong Kit Cheng, briefed reporters about the matter after the closed-door meeting, which no government officials attended.
The government announced in 2020 its plan to convert part of the large Taipa Ferry Terminal into the adjacent airport’s Terminal 2, as part of its long-term development plan to enlarge the airport. The government said at that time that the Terminal 2 project was designed to raise the number of the airport’s annual capacity to handle passengers by up to two million.
In pre-pandemic 2019, the airport’s capacity was planned to be able to handle seven million passengers annually but it recorded 9.6 million passengers that year.
Wong said yesterday that according to the report prepared by her committee, the government has told its members that the post-pandemic recovery of the airport’s passenger number has still been “relatively slow”.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected Macau from early 2020 through 2022.
The local airport recorded a total of 5.15 million passengers last year, the first post-pandemic year, returning to around 54 percent of the number of passengers recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.
According to Wong, the government has told the committee that the airport recorded 1.8 million passengers in the first quarter of this year, returning to 77 percent of the level recorded in the same period of 2019. The government now expects the number of airport passengers in 2024 to increase by 10 percent to 15 percent year on year.
The government noted that the airport is currently able to handle 10 million passengers annually after the existing terminal was expanded in 2022. Consequently, according to Wong, the government has concluded that the airport’s current capacity would still be able to handle passengers in the near future. Therefore, the government has decided to suspend its Terminal 2 project.
However, according to Wong, the government underlined that in line with Macau’s future development of its civil aviation sector, the government would again study the feasibility of relaunching the Terminal 2 project in the future.
Meanwhile, according to Wong, the government has also told the committee that it expects a helipad at the Taipa Ferry Terminal to come into service in the second half of next year, adding that it is now preparing to launch a tender for the project.
This photo taken from the airport’s monthly magazine published last month shows a carpark and a pick-up and drop-off area for tourist coaches outside the airport at that time.
