SNC Lavalin Nexacor of Canada, which is a shareholder at Malta International Airport, won a EUR400-million bid to build an airport in Benghazi, the official news agency JANA said on Wednesday.

It should take two years to build the airport that will be able to handle five million passengers a year and 45 aircraft an hour, JANA said after Seif al-Islam, son of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, inaugurated the project late Tuesday.

Benghazi is 1,000 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli, where work had begun on a new EUR1 billion airport which will be able to handle 20 million people a year.

Transport Minister Mohammed Abu Ajila said the new Tripoli airport would inaugurate a “radical change” in the country’s air transport sector, with a further two billion euros set aside to modernise other airports.