Work on the expansion of airport infrastructure and facilities at Pemba, a port and the capital of Cabo Delgado province in north eastern Mozambique, has commenced with completion expected in six months. |
| Pemba Airport (TravelPictures) |
According to António Loureiro, Director of the Office for Special Projects at Aeroportos de Moçambique (AdM), the parastatal tasked with running Mozambique's airports, the project to modernize Pemba falls under AdM's ongoing plan to renovate and upgrade all of Mozambique's airports in order to respond to growing demand.
Works, which will cost USD10million, will be carried out in two phases: the first phase will include enlarging the airport terminal to 100sqm to enable the segregation of passenger departures and arrivals as prescribed under IATA normsThe second phase will involve the upgrade and repair of the airport's apron and runway 17/35 which is 45x1'800m long.
Built during Portuguese colonial rule in the sixties, Pemba Airport has been experiencing above average traffic as a result of the development of tourism in that region as well as the discovery of gas and oil by companies such as American company Anadarko and Italy's ENI.
In 2010, following a feasibility study which concluded that "the amount required to expand the existing airport would not have been far short of what would be required to build an entirely new airport", AdM announced it would embark on an ambitious USD300million project to build a new airport for Pemba, and whose capacity would have been 500'000 passengers per year.
