Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican Prime Minister Benvinda Levi has challenged the country’s Civil Aviation Institute (IACM) to adopt commercial strategies capable of making air travel fares more affordable.
According to Levi, who was speaking on Wednesday, in Maputo, during the ceremony in which she swore into office Emanuel Chaves as IACM Chairman, air travel fares in Mozambique should be accessible to all social and economic strata.
“Air travel should not continue to be a service exclusively for high-income passengers in Mozambique. As part of the expansion of air travel in Mozambique, the IACM must propose concrete actions that allow operators to set more affordable and fair air travel fares, respecting best practices and international standards”, she said.
Levi explained that in addition to licensing and overseeing the activities of air operators, the IACM must focus its actions on conducting market studies that will enable the development of policies and strategies to improve the instruments for regulating the economic activity of aviation in the country.
“It is our expectation that the IACM will continue to fulfil its role by ensuring transparency and impartiality, as well as the necessary environment for our country to have a robust flagship airline, without losing sight of the fact that we are in a context of opening our airspace to more operators”, she said.
Regarding the ongoing restructuring of Mozambique Airlines (LAM), the Prime Minister said “the process is part of a series of actions the government is undertaking to improve air services in the country.”
For his part, Chaves said that the greatest challenge is ensuring that ordinary citizens can fly and “this is a challenge that’s not just ours, it’s a challenge for the entire continent.”
He said that less than 10 per cent of the African population travels by plane, and the rest use road transport.
“It’s a situation that we all, in Africa, in our country, must solve. There are ideas being implemented to solve this. In addition to Mozambique, other African countries are interested in finding solutions to air fares”, he said.
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