SINGAPORE (Bloomberg) — Dubai Airports, the government-owned airfield operator, plans to seek approval for expansion plans costing "billions of dirham" undeterred by the emirate's need for a $20 billion bailout last year.

The company will make a recommendation on boosting capacity within the next few months, chief executive officer Paul Griffiths said yesterday in an interview in Singapore. He declined to elaborate further on the costs.

Dubai plans to press ahead with expanding its current airport and building a new one, even after having to get help from neighbour Abu Dhabi to pay off debts used to finance real-estate projects. Aviation generates as much as 25 percent of the emirate's economy, according to Griffiths, as Dubai has invested in facilities and Emirates Airline to make up for a lack of oil reserves.

"Dubai's vision, attitude towards airport infrastructure is that if you constrain, the growth will go elsewhere," he said. "So we are not going to constrain that growth."

Dubai International Airport, the 17th-biggest worldwide in terms of passengers, handled 40.9 million travellers last year, a 9.2 percent increase. The airport operator expects passenger numbers to rise 14 percent this year to 46 million.

The airport's capacity is due to rise to 75 million passengers a year in 2012 from 60 million now. That will be followed by an increase to as much as 97 million, Griffiths said.

Some 25 miles away, the emirate is also building the Al Maktoum Airport, which will eventually have a capacity of 120 million passengers. Dubai pushed back the opening of the first phase of the airport to this year because of construction delays. The new airport will cost $33 billion, Griffiths has said.

"Recognising that the airports are a critical part of the economy here, it seems to me the capacity of the airports and expansions already announced would satisfy Dubai's needs for the foreseeable future," said Nicholas Maclean, managing director of CB Richard Ellis Middle East.

"Unless it comes as a partnership with said Abu Dhabi, it seems to be a very ambitious plan and we'd need to see the plans and understand more about how they intend to fund" any new infrastructure plans, Maclean said.

Dubai and its state-owned companies borrowed at least $80 billion through 2008 to transform the emirate into a tourism and financial hub. The seizure of debt markets after the onset of the global credit crisis led to a 50 percent decline in property prices in the city and hampered the ability of Dubai-based companies to raise new loans to refinance maturing debt.

Dubai, the second-biggest of seven states that make up the UAE, has geared itself to host as many as 15 million tourists annually by 2015, according to government estimates. It built islands in the shape of palms, the world's tallest tower and a ski slope inside a shopping mall in hope to lure travellers from around the world.

The Dubai Shopping Festival, which kicked off this week, seeks to position the emirate among the world's leading retail destinations. Dubai Duty Free said on January 4 it made a record $1.1 billion in sales last year, or five percent of all airport retail sales worldwide.