The scene will be a shock for football stars and die-hard fans landing at Sao Paulo-Guarulhos international airport, Latin America's busiest.

The small immigration hall is choked with passengers from multiple flights arriving consecutively.

Passengers can be seen queuing on the stairway for lack of space in the poorly ventilated hall, leaving even the bounciest football fan a little queasy.

With less than 850 days before the Fifa World Cup 2014 in Brazil kicks off, the pressure is on for engineers to score a win for Brazil's ailing infrastructure. The country's ageing international airports, already operating beyond full capacity, are unprepared to accommodate the 500,000 visitors expected for the Fifa World Cup in 2014.

The government urgently needs to speed up work on expanding the airports in the next two years if it is to avoid embarrassment and logistical complications during the mega sporting event.

In preparation for the World Cup, the government will invest over $52 billion (Dh190 billion) on 786 projects to improve infrastructure in the 12 cities hosting the matches, according to The Brazilian Association of Infrastructure and Basic Industry (Abdib).

Sao Paulo, the city that will host the opening match on June 12, 2014, will get the biggest chunk with $16.9 billion. Rio de Janeiro follows with $7.7 billion in investments in the city hosting the final match of the World Cup.

Already, 196 projects worth $12 billion are underway in the host cities.

Another 587 projects worth $38.6 billion are in the pipeline.

Urban mobility

Most of the investments, valued at $30.5 billion, are going towards urban mobility projects, given the infamous traffic jams in overcrowded cities like Sao Paulo and the transport expansions necessary to accommodate hundreds of thousands of World Cup fans.

The major airports in the 12 host cities landed $3.4 billion in government investments for expansion and improvements, according to Abdib.

Last week, Brazil sold long-term operating licences for Sao Paulo's international airport (Guarulhos), Viracopos airport in Campinas, and Brasilia airport in an auction that raised $14 billion for the country's three busiest travel hubs.

The move finally came after the government faced mounting criticism for dragging its feet to resolve pressing infrastructure issues — still, it gives developers only two and a half years to lift the airports to international standards.

A host of Brazilian and foreign investors drove up offering prices for Brazil's biggest airports by more than 300 per cent in the auction held by Brazil's National Civil Aviation Agency at the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange.

The winning operators are expected to invest a total of 16.1 billion reais in the three airports and are expected to operate their respective airports in conjunction with state airports operator Infraero. Together the airports accounted for about a third of Brazil's 179 million passengers last year and 57 per cent of its air cargo, according to Bloomberg.

The concession contract demands the winners to complete specific projects before the World Cup: In the case of Guarulhos, this includes building a terminal with a capacity of seven million passengers a year as well as improvements to the runways, parking lots, and access roads.

Investors have their eyes set on Brazil's aviation industry at Latin America's biggest economy recorded 7.5 per cent growth last year and record low unemployment rates created a growing bulge in the middle class. That spurred air traffic growth of double-digit rates, with demand jumping 16 per cent in 2011.

The auction marks a paradigm shift in President Dilma Roussef's Workers' Party, which has long opposed the private management of facilities and industries it considers strategic.

"The newly discovered privatisation ideology needed to be matched by action and we were somewhat surprised to see new president Dilma Rousseff apparently reversing years of anti-privatisation left wing baggage despite continuing resistance from her Workers Party," according to an analysis by CAPA Center for Aviation. "Clearly the truth has finally dawned and this looks like being the first push by a more pragmatic President to tackle Brazil's lack of adequate infrastructure generally."

With less than 850 days before the 2014 World Cup, Brazil scrambles to revamp its ailing infrastructure