The Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB) has launched an ambitious five-year strategy aimed at significantly boosting revenue to P500 million by 2029, building on recent successes. In 2023, the Authority reported revenue of P182 million.
The strategy sets out three key focus areas; to improve operational efficiency, financial resilience and revenue optimisation, and safety and security.
In an interview with The Business Weekly & Review, CAAB CEO Bao Mosinyi explained that the strategy focuses on increasing revenue to reduce reliance on government subventions.
“To give you a perspective, before COVID-19, our best year from a financial standpoint was 2020, where we made about P176 million, aside from government subvention. That went down during the pandemic as you would expect. Last year was our best year ever in the history of the organisation as we made P182 million.”
He explained that to ensure sustainability, the authority aims to drive cost reduction through leaner operations and explore new opportunities to generate additional revenues.
“Over the last couple of years, we have slightly increased the aeronautical fees, but we are also looking into non-aeronautical revenue. We continue to explore potential uses of the land around the airport in order to create more activity. We now have a hotel and conference centre coming up just close to the airport, one of the projects we expect to increase revenue.”
The third part of the strategy relates to safety and security. “Quite recently, our safety and security scores as audited by the International Civilization Authority (ICAO) have gone really high. Currently, we are at 85.68 percent on safety and 76.9 percent on security. The strategy calls for us to get to 95 percent on both safety and security in 2029,” he explained.
Mosinyi, who took over as CEO in 2021, expressed confidence in the successful execution of the strategy. “We do have confidence in the backdrop of what we have done in the last couple of years. This organisation has transformed operationally and financially, we are in a better state than we have ever been,” he said.
