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By João Machado
Authorities Nonetheless Goals to Privatize TAAG Angola Airlines in 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic and its results on air transport didn’t change the Angolan authorities’s targets for TAAG Angola Airlines. The nationwide airline remains to be anticipated to conclude its privatization course of in 2022, as was introduced this week to journalists by Angolan Transport Minister Ricardo d’Abreu in an occasion to rejoice the 44th anniversary of the ministry’s basis, reported Newsavia.
This implies the unique plan below the native authorities’s Propriv — the shorthand it makes use of for its Privatizations Program — is unchanged.
The method, Forbes Angola reviews, is split into two phases: first is the corporate’s stabilization, and second is the recapitalization — each of which to be accomplished in direct concordance with the nation’s Ministry of Finance.
“Therefore, we will have 2021 to keep supporting the flag carrier,” d’Abreu mentioned, “because it’s a matter that seems pertinent and, above all, to endow [TAAG] with a better operational capacity [and] improve [its] commercial and financial capacities.”
Though the authorized technique of sale is predicted to start out in 2021, TAAG’s modernization efforts began already final yr with a cost-cutting program, in accordance with airline CEO Rui Carreira in an interview with Jornal de Angola nespaper earlier this yr. Moreover, just a few months in the past, the airline took supply of its first Sprint 8-400 turboprops, from an order of six made in 2019.
“One of the main objectives of our restructuring and reforms plan is the company’s financial equilibrium. And the financial equilibrium depends, amongst other factors, on the fleet equilibrium. To have an idea, it serves to say we have 22 medium-haul destinations and four long-haul, but we have more long-haul aircraft than medium-haul, which shows, clearly, the lack of fleet equilibrium,” Carreira instructed the newspaper. “With the acquisition of more medium-haul aircraft, our fleet gains equilibrium. And the fleet equilibrium allows the company’s financial equilibrium.”
In response to Airfleets, TAAG’s fleet at present consists of seven Boeing 737-700s, three Boeing 777-200s, 5 Boeing 777-300s and two Sprint 8-400s.
A TAAG 777-300ER. (Picture: Parker Davis | AirlineGeeks)
With that, the airline is planning to construct a powerful community from its Luanda hub, with the 737s freed by the Sprint 8s to function longer sectors, in an effort to convey higher outcomes to the airline. In an interview with African Aerospace, Carreira mentioned that, earlier than COVID-19 broke out earlier this yr, TAAG anticipated to have a loss between $80 million and $85 million, versus the $135 million in damages registered in 2019, whereas aiming for profitability inside three years.
In May, already below the pandemic, the CEO instructed Expansão the airline may lose $270 million this yr, needing pressing cash injections from the Angolan state.
The airline’s steady want for state support, intensified by the pandemic, makes the privatization much more enticing to the federal government itself, as already earlier than the pandemic Angola was not experiencing the identical financial growth that a lot of the developed world had been. That had positioned its authorities below steady pressure, and offloading TAAG from its portfolio will seemingly present a lot wanted aid and allow the federal government to focus its sources elsewhere.
João has liked aviation since he was six-years-old when he began visiting his dwelling airport in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. As he at all times liked writing, in 2011, at age 10 he began his very personal aviation weblog. Many issues have occurred since then, and now he’s placing all his efforts into being an airline govt sooner or later.
