Mexico City, September 3 (Xinhua-RHC) -- On Tuesday, Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, in his second state-of-the-nation address, announced the construction of a new international airport in the capital of Mexico City.

With a budget of 9.23 billion U.S. dollars, the new airport will have six landing strips and serve 126 million passengers a year, which will quadruple the capacity of the current two-terminal international airport.

"The new airport will be Mexico's largest infrastructure project in recent years, and one of the largest in the world," Pena Nieto said.

In 2002, protests led authorities to scrap a planned new airport on the outskirts of Mexico City. According to the latest proposal, the new airport will be built on federally owned land next to the existing facility.

The new airport is not only needed to handle Mexico's growing air traffic, but also "an opportunity to drive development," said Pena Nieto, calling it "Mexico's gateway to the world."