The government has instructed the Aeroportos de Mocambique (AdM) to grant concessions for the management of airports as a way of “diversifying revenue”.
The airports are: Nacala, Bilene, Lumbo, Angoche, Inhambane and Ponta do Ouro.
This, as FTWO reported on June 8, follows the statement by the president of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, that the parliamentary lawmakers were considering the restructuring, privatisation or closure of 20 public companies. “It is a restructuring or re-evaluation of the existence (of public enterprises), such as Aeroportos de Mocambique….”, he added.
But, while observers suggested that this seemed a clear message that AdM and other state companies could be privatised, the deputy minister firmly rejected it as he stressed that this “granting of a concession to a private entity is not the same as privatising these airports”.
Indeed, from government statements and a number of reports in the Mozambique press, it all seems more likely that the government is looking to the private sector to take over the airports’ extensive debts. And AdM admitted a debt of the equivalent of R7.5 billion, guaranteed by the state.
This was confirmed by Joseph Hanlon in the Mozambique Investor. He wrote that AdM chairman, Emanuel Chaves, had said that the company wanted to “covert (sic) these guaranteed debts to another financer who might buy our debt.”
The debt is largely for new airport facilities in Maputo and Pemba, which are not included in the latest list of concessionary airports, and the new airport in Nacala, which is. But there’s no clear information on just how deeply in debt Nacala is – although there are estimates floating about that it may be as much as the equivalent of R2.2 billion.
And Hanlon described it as having “proved to be a white elephant”.
Opened in 2014, he added, “with the promise of being a major international airport, it has a capacity of 500 000 passengers per year and can take planes up to the size of a Boeing 747. But so far it has only one flight a day from Maputo, and no foreign airline has expressed any interest in flying there”.
So it seems unlikely that the private sector will look at taking over a multi-billion debt to operate a “white elephant”.
In addition, the other five concessions are for what Hanlon said were “tiny airports”, and Inhamane is the only one with scheduled flights.
