Mahogany Air see light
Written by Millennium on July 29, 2019
MAHOGANY Air chief executive officer Jim Belemu has called for steady and effective investment in the in the aviation sector.
Dr Belemu said maximizing the potential of the aviation growth in Zambia will depend on the levels of trade liberalization increase.
He said annual growth could be more than two percentage points faster, leading to a tripling in passengers over the next 20 years.
He said aviation was faster than land or water transportation, thereby leading to efficiency in trade and faster economic growth.
Dr Belemu said this when he made a presentation during the National Economic Summit organized by the Economics Association of Zambia (EAZ) in Livingstone yesterday.
He said the aviation industry in Zambia had recorded a positive growth for the first quarter of 2018 and the passenger numbers increased by 12.4 percent compared to the same period in 2017.
He called on operators in the airline business to change their attitude in order for them to remain sustainable.
“In recent years, we have seen airlines finding it difficult to do business and continued to close down. It is time for us as operators to change the attitude in order to be sustainable and this can be done by use of efficient equipment equivalent to the traffic which make it sustainable and allows us to compete with major carriers,”Dr Belemu said.
He said Mahogany Air was contributing greatly in promoting domestic tourism by opening up new routes in areas with potential tourism growth.
Dr Belemu said the growth of the tourism and aviation sector depended on close collaboration between Government and the private sector.
He said Government needed to come up with incentives that would further propel significant development in the aviation industry.
He said most countries had continued to rely on the bilateral air service agreements despite being restrictive in nature.
