JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - PT Angkasa Pura II, Indonesia's state-owned airport services company, says investment to 2023 will total Rp 94.9 trillion (S$9.5 billion)to cope with soaring aviation business growth across the archipelago. The majority of the investment will go to Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport with the remainder for airports in Sumatra.

The investment in Soekarno-Hatta will mostly be in the construction of a fourth terminal and third runaway, the revitalisation of Terminals 1 and 2, infrastructure to increase flight traffic and expansion of the taxiway.

The construction of the fourth terminal is expected to be completed by 2022 while the revitalisation of Terminals 1 and 2 is slated to be finished in 2020. The company will start construction of the third runway by the third quarter of 2018, and it is expected to be completed in 18 months.

"We will plan for the expansion in 2018 and then we'll report it to the Transportation Ministry for approval," Angkasa Pura II president director Muhammad Awaluddin said recently. "Soekarno-Hatta will get the biggest investment."

For the runway, the company is still procuring 216ha of land. "So if by the end of the third quarter of 2018 we already have procured 50 to 60 per cent of the land, we will start construction," Awaluddin added.

The expansion is expected to cater to booming passenger traffic over the next five years, allowing Soekarno-Hatta to handle 114 aircraft movements per hour, up from around 80 aircraft movements per hour today.

Awaluddin added that the development was urgent to eliminate passenger backlogs caused by the airport's limited capacity.

The airport this year is expected to handle 60 million passengers, and 100 million by 2021. Current capacity until next year is 43 million passengers.