Safety concerns in Turkey knock TUI
TUIGROUP, the world’s largest tour operator, reported a 40 percent drop in bookings to Turkey this summer due to safety concerns and said it was investing in Cape Verde and Bulgaria as alternatives to security-threatened North Africa.
Turkey is especially popular with German tourists, but has seen demand slump after a suicide bomber killed 10 Germans in a busy Istanbul square in January. Russians have been told to stay away by Moscow, following the shooting down of a military jet last year.
Turkey has since offered jet fuel subsidies in a bid to stimulate tourism demand.
TUI chief executive Fritz Joussen said that around 14 percent of its customers had travelled to Turkey last summer, but it expects to send only 1 million tourists there this year, compared with just under 2million in a usual year.
TUI reported a first-quarter underlying loss before interest, tax and amortisation of
101.7 million (R1.82 billion), against a loss of 104.8m one year ago. Travel companies typically report a loss in the first quarter. – Reuters NIGERIA was aiming to hand over the $4.5 billion (R72.7bn) Ajaokuta steel complex to private operators this year as part of a plan to kick start its industrial and mining industries, Solid Minerals Development Minister Kayode Fayemi said.
Construction of Ajaokuta, which lies on the Niger River and was supposed to have an installed capacity of 5 million tons of steel a year, began in 1979. Work was delayed by the government’s failure to pay the builders, Russia’s Tyazhpromexport, on schedule. By 2004, when it was taken over by India’s Ispat Industries, it was yet to produce any steel.
Ispat’s concession was revoked in 2008 and Nigeria was yet to resolve all outstanding legal issues, Fayemi said.
“Ajaokuta steel mill is one of the major issues I have put on the table,” Fayemi said on Monday. “Under my watch” it would be revived, he said.
Fayemi was appointed in November by President Muhammadu Buhari, about seven months after he won elections that marked the first change of power in Africa’s biggest economy since democracy was restored in 1999.
Diversify from oil
Buhari is trying to boost the slowest economic growth this century by spending on infrastructure and diversifying economic activity away from oil, the price of which has fallen by about 70 percent over the last two years.
In addition to steel, Fayemi said the government aimed to improve the implementation of mining laws, make available better data on the country’s deposits and act to regulate informal mining. Because of the global rout in commodity prices, Fayemi does not expect significant investment soon.
“The sector has been comatose for some time,” he said.
“We will be ready for the next boom.”
Initially the focus would be on industrial minerals for local consumption, he said. Limestone for cement production, iron ore for steel, bitumen for asphalt, barium for oil drilling, lead and zinc would be focused on, he said.
The country would also try to attract investment into gemstone mining and would improve data on gold deposits before trying to attract investors next year, he said. – Bloomberg