Julius Nyerere Inter Airport: 4 ‘non-beneficial’ contracts under review

Dar es Salaam. The Minister for Works, Transport and Communication Prof Makame Mbarawa on Friday said, he was going to form a team of experts to review four service provision contracts at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) which he said were not beneficial to the country.

Without naming the contracts, or in what specific area of services that will be probed, he said the move is aimed at boosting government revenues.

 “Next week I will form a team of experts who will assist me in the review before we announce the way forward,” said the minister as he was touring JNIA terminal II building.

He said the government shall discuss with the service providers and negotiate the new terms that would first put forward national interests. He noted that the talks will be as transparent as it was done on the signing of the Tanzania International Container Terminal Services (TICS) new contract.

“There are some tenants who don’t rent on time, and that is just one way of how the airport is losing revenues. We want to have genuine investors who would respect terms of contracts,” he said. Currently, JNIA has a total of 130 contracts with various service providers.

On his tour, Prof Mbarawa visited the visas section which is controlled by the immigration department, bank section under the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) where customs payments are done and the customs unit where clearance is done.

The three sections are blamed for delaying passengers up to three hours contrary to a maximum standard of 45 minutes per person.

Prof Mbarawa underscored the need to improve the JNIA management in order to improve efficiency in handling passengers.

He stated the changes would help to increase competence of the country’s main gateway and furthermore boost revenue collections, “we need to have patriotic and committed management,” he said.  

On his part, the Acting Director General of Tanzania Airport Authority (TAA) Mr Salim Msangi said the challenges are caused by the limited size of the terminal.

According to him, the airport was designed capacity was to handle 1.2 million passengers annually, but the number has doubled to 2.5 million per year.

“You can see the mismatch of the capacity and the actual number of passengers we handle, that is why some of the infrastructures are overwhelmed, but we are trying our best to address those challenges,” explained Mr Msangi.

“The permanent solution will be attained after the accomplishment of the terminal III which is designed to handle many passengers,” he explained.