Guarded optimism on arrival of ATCL aircraft

WITH enthusiasm still high after the arrival of one of the two AirTanzania Company Limited (ATCL) planes in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, stakeholders say the national carrier needs competent management to run it profitably.

The stakeholders called on the government to make sure they appointed competent team to run the airline to avoid plunging it into losses as it was the case earlier.

The chairman of the parliamentary committee for infrastructure development Prof Adamson Sigalla commended government efforts to restore the glory of the ailing ATCL to be an active airline in the country and in the region.

“The public has been caught by excitement due to the fifth phase government achievements where in less than one year accomplished purchasing two planes that past regimes failed,” he said in an interview with the Daily News yesterday.

He however emphasized the need for hiring a competent management that would determine the bright future of the ATCL to contribute to the country’s economic growth.

He said by employing capable and knowledgeable management on the aviation industry ATCL would become a strong and profitable national airline carrier. “We need to avoid past mistakes of putting weak and unknowledgeable staff that would throw the institution into heavy losses,” he said.

He said also ATCL should be registered with the international travel agents to harness immense opportunities including more travellers from different parts of the world.

“This is a unique opportunity to boost local and foreign tourism,” he said adding that the government should improve small airports particularly in areas with tourism attractions to accommodate more tourists.

On his part, the Eagle Travel Distribution System, Chief Executive Officer, Mr Renatus Kyakalaba said public excitement is one thing but the government should address first management problems to run ATCL profitably.

“Even if we buy 100 planes, without competent management it will be useless,” he said adding that it is high time ATCL run commercially.

The other plane is expected at the end of the week. Last week President John Magufuli appointed Emmanuel Korosso and the new Chairman of ATCL Board of Directors and Ladislaus Ernest Matindi Director General of the airline. Prior to appointment, Mr Matindi was Director in EGNOS-Africa Joint Programme Office in Senegal

Tanzanian scoops top award in New York

EXECUTIVE Director of the Msichana Initiative in Tanzania, Rebeca Gyumi, has been honoured for her efforts to end child marriage in the country at the first annual Global Goals Awards in New York.

Speaking shortly after receiving the award, she said “I would like to dedicate this award to all Tanzanian girls and every girl around the world who escaped child marriage in search of freedom. You are my true motivation,” she said.

Ms Gyumi, along with the Msichana Initiative, won a landmark court case in July that ended legal provisions permitting child marriage in the country. “Changing the law is one step towards ending child marriage.

But it is just the beginning of a wider campaign to change these inhuman acts,” said Gyumi, adding that for child marriage to end, people need to work together.

Ms Gyumi was honoured during a ceremony in New York along with a Syrian teen and Olympic swimmer who saved fellow refugees from drowning, and an organization that brings health care to vulnerable girls and women in Pakistan.

The three honorees were recognised for their significant contributions to advancing the rights of girls and women. Leaders from business, government, and entertainment attended the ceremony.

Also present were Chief International Correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour, entrepreneur Chris Anderson and Grammy Award winner and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo.

The Global Goal Awards are part of ongoing efforts to rally support for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of goals unanimously adopted by every country in the world to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.

The awards were curated by UNICEF with the 17 SDG Advocates forming the official judging panel.

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Last Edited on 2016-08-31

Dar enters UN good books in education for all achievement

UNITED Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has said Tanzania was an exemplary nation in making education available to all.

The UN chief made the remarks on Sunday when launching the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity report, titled ‘The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World.’

The launching ceremony was held at the UN headquarters in New York and was attended by the commissioners of the Education Commission, including former President Jakaya Kikwete.

Present during the launch include the commission’s Coconvenors: Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway, President Arthur Peter Mutharika of Malawi and the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Irina Bokova.

Others were the UN Special Envoy for Education, Mr Gordon Brown, who is also the commission’s Chairperson, large investors, including CEO of the Dangote Groupe, Mr Aliko Dangote, research institutes, financial institutions, civic organisations and students.

“Experience from countries such as Tanzania, Vietnam and my own country, South Korea, shows that where there is political will, plus opportunities and financial resources something positive can be done in education,” the UN chief said.

He said the international community must provide assistance to such countries and others that have decided to bring reforms in their education systems to get desired results.

The report points out that with more than 250 million children out of school and another 330 million children failing to achieve the most basic learning outcomes, the world cannot hope to achieve the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The report sets out the commission’s four-stage plan that will, among others, aim to generate the reforms and investment that will get every child on track to enter school by 2030; increase the number of qualified high school graduates in low and middle-income countries from 400 million to 850 million by 2030 and raise the numbers even further to 1.2 billion during the next decade.

The stage includes having all countries adopting the reforms of the fastest improvers, which is 25 per cent of education performers around the world. Instead of only one in 10 schools being online, all schools would go digital.

Plan Two is for every country to see education as an investment in the future and elevate spending in low-income countries -- from three per cent of national income today to five per cent of national income; The third stage of the plan is to mobilise the combined resources of the international institutions.

No country committed to reforming and investing should be denied the chance to deliver universal education for lack of funds; and Stage Four calls for a ‘Financing Compact’ between developing countries, donors and multilateral institutions under which overall aid will rise to US35 dollars a year per child by 2030, significantly less than US1 dollars a week, hardly a wasteful use of the world’s resources.

The secretary general said the report makes the case for investment in education as a prerequisite for economic growth, sustainable development and global stability.

He noted that while the crisis of education is eminently solvable, if current trends continue; “we will not achieve universal primary education until 2042, and upper secondary education until 2084. We will miss SDG 4 by half a century.”

Contributing to the launching of the report as one of the Commissioners, former President Kikwete said achievement in education means that every child, including those living in difficult conditions and marginalised, especially girls, have access to education.

He said one out of 20 girls living in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa finish primary school education while 75 million children in school going age face various dangers. The figure includes one million Syrian refugee children who are not in schools.

“The report points out a vision of providing opportunities to future generation with a focus on children refugees, street children, girls, children in labour and other groups,” former president Kikwete stressed.

The report is a culmination of a one year analysis work that involved 30 research institutions and consultations that involved more than 300 contributors from 105 countries.

Standards on digital financial services underway as ITU register 62m accounts

THE International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is crafting international standards on digital financial inclusion as Tanzania financial service provider announced it had registered over 62 million accounts in the country.

The standards seeks to tighten security, improve network quality as well as userfriendly terms and condition on digital access to and use of formal financial services by excluded and underserved populations Bank of Tanzania (BoT) Governor Prof Benno Ndulu said at the Sixth Meeting of the ITU Focus Group on Digital Financial Inclusion held in Dar es Salaam the country had a booming number of active accounts standing at 21.9 million as of July this year.

Tanzania has already become first, globally, to achieve wallet to wallet interoperability in digital financial service -- allowing one user to send or receive money from another mobile operator.

“From our regulatory point of view, we are seeing increased number of transactions since then with reduced costs as a result of sharing infrastructure in the country,” Prof Ndulu told the conference yesterday.

According to the governor, the achievement were driven by adaptation and application of mobile money as a platform for delivery of financial services which account by more than half of increased usage of formal non-banking financial services.

The central bank and financial regulator inked a MoU with the Tanzania Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) to discharge its obligations the plan which had helped embrace digital financial services.

ITU Programme Coordinator, Mr Venkatesen Mauree, explained that the meeting which involved policy makers, ITU member states, regulators and payment option providers were working for a collective solution regarding digital financial inclusion challenges.

He said the aim is to develop an international standard that can help guide users and providers on security issues, quality and terms. “There are time a client fails to get service despite that has paid.

under technical issues or network failure the payment may arrive late or bounce all this are gaps that were working on,” He said noting there already specifications developed and according to him, the standards are expected to be ready by next year.

He lauded Tanzania for becoming a first country in the globe to have adopted interoperability. “Digital financial service has led to strong economic growth and we hope Tanzania can benefit from this transformation.”

But Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Senior Program Officer Mr Sacha Polverini who is responsible for financial services for the poor said relationship between regulators BoT and TCRA must be strengthened.

Aircrafts triple at newly renovated Dodoma airport

AIRCRAFTS landing daily at Dodoma Airport have tripled to nine from the normal three following completion of expansion works on the runway, Airport Manager Mr Julius Mlungwa has said.

He said the completion of the works early this month has allowed more flights to land at the semi-arid region and the country’s designated capital, lowering airfare to passengers. “The airport expansion works are complete by 100 percent.

We are now finalising putting mark-points,” he said. Mr Mlungwa said, for long, air travelers, including tour agents, businesspeople, government officers, leaders, international organisation representatives and ordinary people, had been complaining about escalating airfares to and from Dodoma.

“We had only two flights, Auric Air and Flight Link. They were both 13-seaters and fare stood at 495,000/- for single ticket from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma.

It was not easy for an ordinary person to use air transport,” he said. Tanzania Airport Authority (TAA) Engineer Mbila Mdemu who was in charge of the expansion project said the last renovation works at Dodoma Airport was done in 1976.

He said there was a feasibility study conducted in 2005 to expand the runway but the expansion were not undertaken due to limited financial resources. “President John Magufuli ordered expansion of the runway with other related services before August.

We have managed to complete all the requirement,” he told reporters here yesterday. Dodoma Assistant Apron, Mr Emmanuel Kisumo admitted that despite additional numbers, now the airport is accommodating up to 90-seaters aircrafts.

The new expansion work involved 2.5 kilometre runway and a 500m lighting area for airplane safety during takeoff and landing.

KCB changes tune on M-Pesa loan account

The Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) has made a hasty retreat on its hard-line stance on micro mobile loans, saying they will attract the 14.5 percent interest rate cap.

This comes after weeks of hesitation by the country’s largest bank by assets, which challenged that the loans did not fall under the new Banking Amendment Act.

In an apparent change in tact, KCB has written to its customers informing them that the bank had changed the pricing of all its loan products to include the mobile loans.

“We wish to inform our existing and potential customers that we have adjusted the pricing for all our local currency loan facilities. These changes include KCB M-Pesa, KCB Mobi loans & local currency deposits pursuant to the Banking (Amendment) Act,” KCB wrote on its official twitter page.

KCB has partnered with Safaricom to create the KCB- M-Pesa account, where customers can make deposits, withdrawals and even loan applications without having to go to a branch.

Safaricom has welcomed the move by KCB saying customers will benefit from cheap loans.

“We welcome today’s decision by our partner KCB Bank Kenya to lower interest rates for the KCB mobile money product in line with the recently adopted Banking (Amendment) Act 2016,” Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said.

`The move comes just days after Equity Bank announced that its mobile base loan product, Eazzy loan, will be priced at 14.5 percent per annum on a reducing balance. This translates to about 0.7 percent per month.

Equity has the advantage of being able to process the mobile loans through its own virtual mobile network while the other banks have to go through a mobile operator.

“So even for collaborations the law applies.  That’s why we said whether its credit cards, mobile loans, microfinance, asset finance, consumer or even unsecured, interest rates have now been legislated and there is no window to manipulate the law,” Equity Bank chief executive officer James Mwangi said on Tuesday.

Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) which runs the M-Shwari account also with Safaricom is yet to align its interest rates with the new law. The bank has however written to its customers that deposits on the account will attract an interest rate of 7.35 percent.

“Loan facility fees remain unchanged at 7.5 percent per loan,” CBA said in a notice to customers.

The Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) on Thursday gave KCB and CBA a two day notice to price their micro mobile loans on the new law or have their stand challenged in court.