By David Gold
September 15 – Brazil’s preparations for the 2014 World Cup have been hit after a Federal Court judge ordered work on a new third terminal in São Paulo’s main international airport, Guarulhos, to stop.
São Paulo is set to host the opening game of the World Cup, and construction recently began on the Itaquera stadium, which will stage this match.
The country is desperately trying to increase air capacity to meet demand in time for the 2014 competition, as well as for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but Judge Louise Vilela Filgueiras Borer ruled that state airport authority Infraero had awarded a contract to Delta Constructions without going through the appropriate process.
By avoiding the bidding process Filgueiras said that a “dangerous precedent” could be set and that the urgency of the works did not mean this could be bypassed.
The 1.2 billion reais (£440 million/$700 million) project is set to more than double the airport’s capacity to accommodate 52.7 million passengers by 2014 – work that is much needed to meet the growing demands placed on it as air traffic continues to rise dramatically throughout the country.
A report earlier this year warned that the majority of Brazil’s airports would not be ready on time for 2014 unless work on them sped up rapidly.
Infraero have been looking to privatise the upgrades to the airports as a result, with São Paulo being most in need of such works as the biggest city in South America.
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