Turkish company TAV signed an agreement with the Government in September 2008 and won a 20-year concession of Skopje and Ohrid airports, Alexander the Great and St. Paul the Apostle.

The agreement envisaged the modernisation and expansion of the airport with a new terminal building, an extended landing strip, a parking lot, an access road with a new interchange, the installing of systems for ground navigation, utility infrastructure, and the completion of the construction of the administrative building, as well as a new cargo terminal, firefighting station and new airplane hangars.

For the Ohrid Airport, TAV planned to reconstruct the existing parking, renovate buildings in the cargo centre, build of a VIP facility, reconstruct the administrative building, as well as procure new equipment. The cargo airport near Shtip was supposed to be completed in three years, however, this investment did not materialize.

TAV was the only company that bid on the tender of the Government for the concession of the airports.

The signatories of the agreement, the Minister of Transport and Communications at the time, Mile Janakieski, and the CEO of TAV, Mustafa Sani Sener, announced an investment worth 200 million euros.

“Macedonia deserves such an investment that will improve services for its citizens and for all those arriving into the country. The concession agreement for the airports means investing 200 million euros and providing full protection for all employees of the existing Public Enterprise for Airport Services,” stated Janakieski at that moment.

The renovation of the Ohrid airport was finished by April 2011, while the new Skopje airport was built and opened on Macedonia’s Independence Day that same year.

Near the old terminal building, a new terminal building was revealed. The 40,000 square meter include 23 check-in counters and 21 counters for passport control.

At the opening, investors and authorities announced that 110 million euros were invested in the Macedonian airports in Skopje and Ohrid.

According to announcements, a total of 1,800 people were to work at the Macedonian airports.

The latest data from the Central Register, for the previous year, show that a total number of 812 people worked for TAV Makedonija DOOEL, while the company’s non-current assets amounted to over 68 million euros. In 2016, however, the number of employees was drastically reduced to 576 people.

The company’s revenues in 2015 amounted to 24.3 million euros and they were 12.4% higher than in 2014. However, the company’s expenses are greater than its revenues, resulting in a loss of 2.17 million euros.

Interestingly, during the signing of the contract with Turkish TAV, government representative, Janakieski, said that the state was to expect budget revenues between 30 and 40 million euros in the next 20 years from the concession of the airports. The agreement stipulated that the amount of compensation that the Turkish investors should pay will be dependent on the number of passengers coming through the airports.

However, just in 2012, Turkish TAV made payments of 2.67 million euros to the state budget for the concession, which equaled 15% of the gross revenues of the company for that year.

The following year, the number of passengers exceeded one million, which was a prerequisite for reducing the concession fee from 15% to 2% – 4% on gross revenues. This means that according to the amount of revenues, the concession fee ranges from 350 thousand euros to nearly a million euros for the previous year.

Source: http://investicii.prizma.mk/en/inv/TAV