TMCnet News
Region Ready to Liberalise Airtraffic ManagementKampala, Jul 12, 2010 (East African Business Week/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi are among the first member states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) that have declared their readiness to implement the liberalisation of Air Transport Services, Communications Navigation Surveillance and Air Traffic Management Systems Project, the COMESA Secretary General, Sindiso Ngwenya has said. "The others are the DR Congo, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe," he said in a statement issued by the COMESA secretariat after a meeting with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame in Kigali recently. Ngwenya said already the African Development Bank has promised a grant to the regional block that would enable the implementation process to start. "With the AfDB grant, the ground is set for the implementation of the project and we shall start with cluster countries that have shown readiness," said Ngwenya. President Kagame urged the COMESA-EAC-SADC secretariat's to ambitiously implement the region's tripartite framework activities that will culminate into the establishment of the Free Trade Area (FTA). The statement said the project was endorsed by the COMESA Heads of States and Government Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2007 on the basis of the Kalisimbi Project that seeks to provide low cost, high-capacity communications to the region. |