Ethiopian Airlines targets Western and Southern African markets

ለመጀመሪያ ጊዜ በኢትዮጵያ የጉዞ ወኪሎች ታሪክ በቀን 24 በሳምነት 7 ቀን ክፍት የሆነ የጉዞ ወኪል፡፡
Ethiopian Airlines targets Western and Southern African markets
Ethiopian Airlines targets Western and Southern African markets

By Kirubel Tadesse

Capital

Ethiopian Airlines targets to increase its profile in the African market by expanding western and southern routes in the coming three years. Planning to increase its fifty routes to sixty, the airline says its main area of concern will be African countries, since the competition is getting stronger, with two American airlines having entered and others showing interest in the African markets.


Ethiopian says it plans to maintain flights to the USA and Europe with a few expansion plans to one or two states in the USA and in Canada. An auditing and inspection team from Canada is expected in one month’s time to allow Ethiopian to fly to Canada.

Ethiopian also plans to acquire two MD-11 aircraft by 2008 and 2009 and expects to receive 10 Boeing 787s, of which eight are expected in 2010 and the remaining by 2011.

There are further plans to increase the fleet from 21 to 30 jet aircraft.

In a half day press conference Junedi Saddo, Transport and Communication Minister, gave on Wednesday December 5, 2007 at the Sheraton Addis, he explained his sector’s five year strategic plan and the last two years’ performance. Junedi was accompanied by CEOs of communication and transport service provider institutions.
Junedi explained that as per the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) study results, changes have been made in the five main and seven support services of the Transport and Communication Ministry. Juneydi stated that in order to satisfy Addis Ababa’s public transport needs with comfortable, efficient and affordable services, the Ministry has signed an agreement to buy one thousand minibuses of which half are expected to arrive in the next quarter budget year.

Replying to questions related to the importation of electric buses by a certain company recently, Junedi stated that the company engaged in the investment imported the buses. He explained that such operation of mass public transportation services could only be run under public investment but that the Ministry gave routes to the investor to complete all necessary tests with the two buses, only in order to encourage future private investment.

“With regard to the telecommunications sector,” Juneydi said, “landline telephone network has registered 14% growth annually with the number of customers going up 21% in the last five years.” Juneydi also said that the mobile network capacity and the number of registered customers have showed an annual growth rate of 123% and 120% respectively. Amare Amesalu, CEO of Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation, on the occasion explained that ETC will work on upgrading its mobile network to 3G level. Amare also stated that in the next three years, ETC mobile service will reach 10 million subscribers and land lines to four million.

Amare used the occasion to announce that a significant amount of the 14 million birr loss ETC incurred due to lack of reporting roaming services in thirty hours period to partners as per the contract, is to be recovered after negotiations with the companies.

Girma Wake, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, and Kasahun Hailemariam, Director General of Transport Authority and others were among the officials in attendance at the press conference chaired by Minister Juneydi.

Juneydi made no attempt to cover up wrongdoings and alleged press unavailability by CEOs and advised them to be more open to the media. Juneydi also warned that if not rescued, the Ethiopian Postal Service will end up in the same state as the Ethio-Djibouti Railway, which is soon to be dissolved and replaced by another corporation
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