New Delhi, May 31: The cabinet today gave an in-principle approval for the construction of an international airport at Navi Mumbai. This will ease the pressure on the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

“The second airport in Navi Mumbai will be constructed under the public-private partnership model through a special purpose vehicle,” said finance minister P. Chidambaram.

Government projections show that over the next five to 10 years, second airports will have to be considered for all the four metros, including Delhi and Calcutta.

The Delhi government has long been toying with the idea of a second airport in Noida, while the Bengal government, too, has talked of plans for a second airport on the southern fringes of Calcutta. The new airport in Mumbai is proposed to be developed in four phases with a total investment of about Rs 10,000 crore.

The government wants to develop the Navi Mumbai airport project, promoted by the Maharashtra government-owned City and Industrial Development Corporation, on a fast-track basis since the current airport will be fully saturated by 2013. The new airport is expected to handle 10 million passengers per annum in its first year of operations in 2013.