TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO
Rehabilitation of Zimbabwe’s airports infrastructure has gathered pace in a bid to develop the country into a regional hub and attract more international airlines, a senior government official has said.
The latest development comes after works have been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns.
The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development, Kudzanayi Chinyanga told Business Times that the main focus was on the three international airports that land wide bodied aircrafts — Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, the Victoria Falls Airport and Joshua Nyongolo Mqabuko International Airport.
“Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, work has been on and off as lockdown restrictions were declared.
“Our focus currently is on the International airports which are Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, the Victoria Falls Airport and the Joshua Nyongolo Mqabuko International Airport. Our aim was to complete RGM airport by the end of the year but due to the time lost the completion time has been moved to 2022,” Chinyanga said.
He said the airport facelift and expansion was in line with the government economic blue print, the National Development Strategy which target to have reliable, safe and world-class air transport infrastructure and services.
Zimbabwe is targeting to increase annual cargo handling capacity from 40.2m tonnes to 43m tonnes by 2025.
Chinyanga also said government was on the market for investments for other smaller airports such as the Buffalo Range Airport.
“Buffalo Range is for small aircraft but still important we have tourists directly on the airport. We are on the market for investments,” Chinyanga said.
Zimbabwe got most of the funds from China Exim Bank.
