Malaysia: US$22.5m to be spent for upgrading Malaysian airports

Malaysia Airports Holdings (MAHB) will spend more than RM100m (US$22m) to upgrade the 39 airports it manages in the country this year and next. Its managing director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said the works include upgrading the toilets and religious assembly buildings at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang. “We are seeing a lot of umrah traffic. KLIA is not designed to cater for [that kind] of volume [and thus the upgrade],” he said. Badlisham said the airport operator constantly upgrades its airports, adding that the Sultan Ismail Petra Airport in Kota Baru is one of them. He noted that MAHB is in talks with the Kedah state government to upgrade the Langkawi airport. Meanwhile, the airport operator has no plans to revise upwards its 5% passenger target growth for 2017.<br/>