Off the wire
• Across China: Rice farmers go high-tech for higher sales  • Brazil beat Russia in World Cup test run  • Spanish Ibex-35 stock exchange suffers further losses on Friday  • Across China: Garbage picker brings books to rural kids  • Ukrainian court rules to arrest lawmaker Savchenko for 2 months  • 1st LD-Writethru: Nigerian president meets released Dapchi schoolgirls  • 1st judge in Albania dismissed under vetting law  • Officials call for compromise to solve name issue between Macedonia, Greece  • Person put in custody in links with S. France hostage-taking incident  • U.S. dollar ticks down  
You are here: 　

Tanzania's new airport terminal to open in June 2019

Xinhua,March 24, 2018 Adjust font size:

DAR ES SALAAM, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's new state-of-the-art terminal at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) in Dar es Salaam is expected to open in June 2019 after funding delays were resolved, the Prime Minister's Office said on Friday.

The long delayed completion of the terminal of the country's main airport is expected to boost government plans to transform Tanzania into a regional transport hub.

Seventy percent of the construction of the airport, expected to cost about 300 million U.S. dollars, is completed, said the statement issued after Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa inspected construction of the terminal.

The new terminal III building at the JNIA will have capacity to park 24 large aircraft at once and handle 6 million passengers each year, said the statement.

Annual traffic at the airport currently stands at around 2.5 million passengers.

Expanding the airport is part of the Tanzanian government's plan to transform Tanzania into a regional hub and boost the country's tourism sector.

The airport construction had initially been due to be completed in 2015, but the schedule was delayed due to shortage of funds.

Tanzania has ramped up infrastructure spending in recent years to expand and build new transport links.

The JNIA terminal III project is designed to accommodate growing traffic and boost tourist arrivals in Tanzania.

Tourism, Tanzania's biggest foreign exchange earner, fetched around 2.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to latest Bank of Tanzania data.

Tanzania currently relies the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Kenya to receive some of its tourists as some major airlines, such as British Airways, currently do not fly to its airports due to low traffic levels.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli ordered a probe into the airport project in February last year after project costs and construction schedules were derailed.

The new airport terminal is being built by Dutch contractor BAM Group in two phases. Enditem

 

Related News & Photos