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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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afrol.com / AENS, 12 December - Swaziland is heading for great investments and development with its Millennium Project, including an international airport and an effort to make the small kingdom a regional tourism centre. Investments are now starting, as the airport plans are being put in concrete terms. Swaziland has awarded a US$ 1 million feasibility study for its proposed new international airport to the Egypt-based Arab Consulting Engineers. Swaziland economic planning principal secretary, Ephraem Hlophe, confirmed on Tuesday that the consultants would develop a detailed implementation and funding model for the proposed multi-million dollar airport near the kingdom's largest city and economic capital, Manzini, by April 2001. The airport, expected to handle 747s and large cargo planes, will replace the Swaziland's current inadequate Matsapha International Airport as part of King Mswati III's US$ 1 billion Millennium Project investment initiative and is expected to go online in 2006. Matsapa cannot currently handle trans-Atlantic or inter-continental flights and serves largely as a charter airport for small regional carriers such as SA Airlink. Local tourism and export operators contend that the limited facilities are hobbling efforts to develop Swaziland into a key regional tourism and hi-tech services centre. Swaziland's broader Millennium Project initiative has included formal requests for international pop icon and Africa enthusiast Michael Jackson to design and partially fund a multi-million dollar theme park in central Swaziland. King Mswati told the nation of roughly one million people earlier this year that Jackson had confirmed his willingness to participate in the development during private discussions. Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa has also meanwhile also been appointed special advisor to the Swaziland government on the initiative. Phosa, who pioneered the US$ 3,5 billion Maputo Development Corridor while premier of South Africa's Mpumalanga province, said his new company, Vuka Investment & Management (Pty) Ltd, would work alongside international auditing firm KPMG to advise the government on the US$ 1 billion project and would also design investment strategies for the small southern African kingdom. The Millennium Project will see the construction of the new airport, an international convention centre, at least one five-star hotel, large new shopping complexes and improvements in the country's main game reserves. The projects are scheduled to begin by the end of the year. Phosa said the project would enhance Swaziland's position as a leading tourist destination in the sub-region. The kingdom's unique 'living' traditional African culture and monarchist government system would, he added, help lure tourists and investors. King Mswati's office has meanwhile also confirmed that US-based General Motors is seriously considering a major new vehicle manufacturing plant in the kingdom. The Swazi government recently announced that future economic growth hinged on the levels of foreign direct investment the country attracts over the next five to 10 years. A drastic fall in foreign direct investment that followed the lifting of economic sanctions against South Africa in the 1990s saw Swaziland's economic growth fall from around six percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year to under three percent.
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