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Air transport to improve tourism and economic growth
2008-04-09 09:22:44
By MICHAEL HAONGA
The Tanzania Air Operators Association (TAOA) has come up with study findings on ``Towards Improving the Air Transport Industry in Tanzania`` calling for air transport stakeholders to jointly adopt and apply it in effecting improvements for streamlining avenues for increased business and easy interplay.
In an interview with this paper the TAOA Chairman, Abdukadir Mohamed, touches on a number of salient issues ranging from on going improvement initiatives and bottlenecks to proposed way forward as he speaks to correspondent.
Question: The Chairman of Tanzania Air Operators Association (TAOA), Abdukadir Mohamed, what prompted findings on improvements of air transport in the country?
Answer: Obstacles hindering smooth movement of domestic air transport include poor state of airports, shortage of qualified manpower such as pilots, aircraft maintenance engineers, flight operational officers, ground and cabin crew.
There has also been unproportional increase between passengers and aircraft services improvement.
This has also been amplified by the Deputy Minister for Infrastructure Development, Dr Milton Obote Mahanga\'s remarks at the launching of the TAOA report in Dar es Salaam on April 13, this year.
The Deputy Minister\'s remarks included the portrayal that
``The air transport in Tanzania, like anywhere in the world is being influenced by the growth in the economy and tourism.
Due to the Tanzania\'s macroeconomic policies, the economy has on average been growing at 5percent per annum over recent years.
While the liberation of the economy started in the mid 80s, the liberalization of air transport started in the early 90s, when domestic scheduled air services were opened up to additional air operators.
On the international scene Bilateral Air Services were liberalized allowing for multiple designations of airlines and unlimited number of frequencies.
As a result of such policies, the traffic volume has been growing steadily.
For example, there was an increase from 2,218,594 passengers recorded in the year 2005/06 to 2,517,651 in the year 2006/07 being an increase of 13.5percebt.
The number of local and international passengers, who passed through Julius Nyerere International Airport rose from 1,094,110 passengers in 2005/06 to 1,195,275 in 2006/07 being an increase of 9.2 percent.
The number of local passengers increased by 12,9 percent from 1,207,402 passengers in 2005/06 to 1,362,763 in 2006/07.
Further more the Minister said a test on the composition of the passengers showed that most of these are tourists, who use air transport to come to Tanzania and to travel to final tourist destinations in the country.
Q: Is the Government aware of this and its linkage to increased business?
A: It is actually to the contrary of that. The Government is aware of the direct linkage between air transport and tourism and this is not from my own words but the very deputy minister who adds that: ``The Government is also aware that increasingly, more Tanzanians are domestically travelling by air and that the expectation of the public and indeed air operators is for the country to have safe, reliable, efficient and affordable air services.``
The Deputy Minister adds that: ``The Government also understands that one of the obstacles facing smooth movement of domestic air traffic is poor state of domestic airports.
To this end, the Government is at various stages towards improving its airports.``
Q: What is being done therefore, to improve airports?
A: This is again well amplified by the very Deputy Minister that ``Discussions by the Government and the World Bank has resulted into positive results with the latter providing funds for feasibility studies and detailed design for rehabilitation of seven airports namely Bukoba, Shinyanga, Tabora, Kigoma, Mafia, Sumbawanga and Arusha.``
The Government has also secured a loan from BADEA for feasibility and engineering design for a new airport at Msalato in Dodoma.
We hope with these airports improved, domestic cargo and passengers will be enhanced.
Q: The TAOA Chairman, may you tell Tanzanians what are your Associaiton\'s achievements?
A: As you might be aware of the rationale for establishing TAOA was to have an organization that will be officially recognized as a representative of all licensed air operators and airport ground services providers in matters affecting the air transport industry in the country.
It is gratifying and I am actually proud to say that TAOA is now a recognized institution and is playing an active role in representing the industry.
Also apart from being consulted by TCAA and TAA on important industry issues, it is also a member of the Tourism Confederation of Tanzania (TCT) and through it TAOA is represented in the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) and the Tanzania National Business Council (TNBC).
Q: What made you come up with the improvement report?
A: As you might be already aware of, Tanzania has set a goal of developing tourism industry by targeting to increase tourist arrivals from the current figure of over 600,000 tourists per annum to over a 1,000,000 tourists by the year 2010.
It is a common knowledge that tourism and air transport are inseparable. Almost all tourists coming to Tanzania arrive by air.
A number of them use domestic air transport to travel within the country.
Now the challenge is, are we prepared to cope with this surge?
Do we, or rather is the industry prepared and equipped to handle this situation?
Our infrastructure particularly airports are capable of handling the anticipated increase in the traffic?
What about the current situation, is the industry and our stakeholders happy with the existing situation?
What about qualified manpower, is it available in the country?
So it was in our attempt to get answers to these questions that TAOA commissioned a group of consultants to do a study and come up with a report.
The study was carried out in the last quarter of 2007 by a team of three consultants namely; Mt Mahmud Shamte - Air Transport from Tanzania Mr Douglas Andrew - Regulatory Agency Expert from UK and Elinisaidie Msuri - Finance expert from Tanzania.
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