External studies for new airport get green light

The head of an Independent Technical Commission (CTI) which has been charged with hiring consultants to undertake 25 studies into potential sites for the Lisbon region’s new international airport has expressed regrets that the Government has taken “so long to draw up contracts and provide the budget to proceed”.

Maria do Rosáro Partidário said she should have been hiring consultants to do the studies from January but six months down the line neither the contract nor the funding from the government had been made available.
The Independent Technical Commission has, however, now been given the green light to begin conducting the 25 studies that are necessary to evaluate each of the nine airport site options on the table.
Work on the studies, however, is only likely to begin in January, while the coordinators of the CTI says that the findings of a public consultation on the results of the second phase of the selection process is set to be published shortly.
According to the business daily Negócios which asked the head of the technical commission, Maria do Rosáro Partidário if it had already began contracting studies, she replied “not yet” but added “it’s now being sorted out”.
The issue surrounds 25 independent studies that the independent commission considers necessary to be able to conclude the evaluations to increase airport capacity for the Lisbon region and whose final report has to be delivered by the end of the year. The holdup — the commission had announced it would be contracting studies back in January – was down to bureaucracy on procedures to secure the funds from the government.
In an interview with Negócios and Antena 1 at the end of April, Rosário Partidário that she was expecting a “yes”. “I should have begun these studies in January and we’re already in May”, she said at the time.
As to the reasons for the delay in hiring independent consultants to begin the studies she explained that this was down to “not having contracts”. “The funds haven’t even been made available”.