Mozambican airport management company Aeroportos de Moçambique is committed to finding alternative ways of self-financing its activities and in that sense, company director Saíde Júnior revealed that real estate assets have an instrumental role in the company’s budget consolidation.
Although without determining how much these assets are valued at, Saíde Júnior only reiterated that they are of great value and are spread across almost the entire country, or large portions of land in places that previously had a use for air traffic management, but which for various reasons, such as technological development in the airport business, have become useless.
“Aeroportos de Moçambique has under its management 20 airports. Of these, 11 are main ones, which are in the provincial capitals, besides Vilanculos and Nacala, but we have some airfields that are in some districts. Nowadays, with the advent of technology, some centres have been deactivated and everything is concentrated at the airport, so we are left with those lands that are well located in the cities. We are therefore going to develop real estate projects, rather than keep them idle,” Saíde Júnior explained.
According to the source, the Aeroportos de Moçambique company essentially has two sources of revenues: aeronautical, which is related to civil aviation; and non-aeronautical, which is related to other services provided in the areas or facilities of the airports themselves.
Currently, the company Aeroportos de Moçambique’s revenues are approximately 87 percent dependent on aviation, and the remaining 13 percent depend on non-aviation, and the experiences with covid-19 showed the need to balance the sources of revenue, as the leader revealed.
The company’s idea is also to transform airport areas, other than runways, into investment centres, in the context of the strategic reorientation of its business, boosting activities or sources of revenues in the non-aeronautical segment, setting up business centres.
Alongside the profitability of assets through the implementation of real estate projects, whether hotel, residential or citadel level, the airport infrastructures themselves will be intervened.
“At least four airports are due to be refurbished in the short term: Beira, Pemba, Nampula and Quelimane. There are plans to build a new airport in Inhambane,” he said.
Aeroportos de Moçambique is currently on a trajectory of recovery and growth, confirmed by the 3.3 percent rise in turnover, in view of the activity in 2021, which was characterised by positive net results of 1.8 billion meticals.
“Overall liquidity in 2021 recorded an increase of five percentage points compared to the same period of the previous year, which shows that the company has been recovering capacity to meet its short-term debts, using current assets in their entirety. This phenomenon is justified by the combined effect of the increase in the client heading and the reduction of short-term economic responsibilities, with greater emphasis on the settlement of debt with Exim Bank-China,” Saíde Júnior said.
The level of the company’s debt in 2021 fell five percentage points, reaching 98 percent, as compared to 103 percent in 2020, which confirms the reversal of the situation of technical bankruptcy, which indicated total and complete dependence on its creditors.
