CARGO haulage by Air Tanzania Co. Ltd (ATCL) has surged by 87.78 percent as of March this year, in the wake of starting operations of the Boeing 767-300F.

Prof Makame Mbarawa, the Transport minister, made this observation when tabling fiscal 2024/25 budget estimates pegged at 2.76trn/- in the National Assembly yesterday, noting that the aircraft commenced operations back in July, flying from Dar es Salaam to Dubai through Nairobi once a week.

The aircraft also flies to Mumbai, Eldoret, Mombasa, Bujumbura, Kinshasa, Bangui, N’Djamena, Entebbe and Lusaka, covering most of east and central Africa as well as the key Indian commercial hub.

“The aircraft alone during the period transported 2,085 tonnes of cargo, an equivalent of 41.41 percent of the total cargo transported between July 2023 and March this year,” he said, pointing out that  ATCL handled 5,034.2 tonnes of cargo during the period compared to 2,681 tonnes for March 2023, implying an 87.78 percent growth.

ATCL was serving 24 destinations, 11 of them beyond our borders, he said, citing the datum that the Boeing 767-300F has a 54 tonnes capacity at a time.

Domestic destinations are Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Arusha, Bukoba, Dodoma, Kilimanjaro, Kigoma, Geita, Mpanda, Songwe, Tabora, Songea and Zanzibar, while international destinations are Bujumbura, Dubai, Entebbe, Comoro, Guangzhou, Harare, Lubumbashi, Lusaka, Mumbai, Nairobi and Ndola, he elaborated.

Three new aircrafts were paid for during the past financial year, with the government expecting to receive a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner later this month, he said, noting that this will bring to 16 aircrafts ATCL maintains.

Hailing the firm’s competitiveness in the country and the region at large, he said that in the next financial year ATCL seeks to make the Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) into an auxiliary hub.

The firm had cleared its debts to pension funds, he stated, highlighting last month’s 18.58bn/- having been paid for pensioners’ claims. This brings to 148.95bn/- or 64 percent of overdue payments, with 82bn/- outstanding (36 percent), he stated.

ATCL had 792 employees as of late March, up from 689 workers a year earlier, with nine more pilots, from 108 to 117, engineers standing at 178, up from 139 earlier. It also employed 55 other staff members, reaching 497 at present.

Hinting at port operations, he said that up to March this year TPA had handled 20.72m tonnes of cargo compared to 14.56m tonnes in July 2022 to March 2023, a 42.31 percent increase.

TPA was still pursuing openings for conducting more shipping services for Rwanda, DRC, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, having registered 8.87m tonnes of cargo from these markets in 2023, up from 8.24m tonnes in 2022, he added.