Mozambique’s Airports Company, (ADM) said it wants to expand and improve the Quelimane airport in the central province of Zambezia, 1600 kilometres north of Maputo.

“ADM has issued a multimillion dollar tender to upgrade the Quelimane airport including the building of the new airport shops and office premises,” said ADM’s spokesperson Sandra Garcia in an interview adding that the construction is expected to take twelve months beginning January next year.
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Mozambican national carrier LAM will acquire two 75-seat airliners before the end of the year, company sources report.

It is not known what routes the new planes will be operated on. LAM starts up a Maputo-Luanda service soon in partnership with Angola’s TAAG. LAM has recently hiked its fares due to rising global fuel prices.

LAM’s fleet comprises four Boeing 737-200s and two Jet Stream 41 turboprops, which operate on domestic services and to Johannesburg and Durban.

Maputo’s publicly owned bus company, TPM, is gradually reopening old routes within the Maputo-Matola connurbation that had been temporarily suspended because of a shortage of buses, reports Friday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”.

This move is now possible because the company is purchasing 100 new buses, and started receiving them in May. The government plan is to supply 20 buses per month until October.

A first batch of 10 was supplied in May, and another 10 arrived two weeks ago. These 20 Volkswagen buses are already circulating in the streets of Maputo. The South African supplier claims that from now on it will make good its promise to supply the buses in monthly batches of 20.
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LAM-Mozambique Airlines, as part of the ongoing modernization process, has been issuing, as from 1st of June 2008, electronic tickets only.

With this measure, the national airline company complies with the guidelines of IATA-International Air Transport Association, which set 31st of May as the deadline for its members to cease issuing printed tickets, a measure IATA says will enable operators to reduce the cost of processing the historic paper tickets from approximately US$10 to US$1.

About 400 million air tickets are issued through the compensation mechanism, known in the civil Aviation Industry as BSP, every year, and the measure will allow a saving in the region of US$3 billion/annum to the industry, according to IATA.
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Maputo, Mozambique, 1 July – The Ponta do Ouro Marine Reserve, in the south of Mozambique, is to be given World Heritage status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in December of this year, the Mozambican Tourism Minister said.

Fernando Sumbana told Mozambican news agency AIM, at the end of a meeting with his South African and Swazi counterparts that the decision aimed to protect and conserve marine species such as turtles, whales and dolphins.
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MAPUTO, 3 June 2008 (IRIN) – Time is one of the few commodities that duty manager Susana Diniz, 28, does not have much of as she attends to a stream of guests booking into the 158-room Holiday Inn hotel in Mozambique‘s capital, Maputo. 

“We have been fully booked for the last few weeks, thanks to the international guests attending some conferences taking place here,” Diniz told IRIN. She recently returned home after a seven-year stint in the hospitality industry in Brazil, where she obtained a hotel management degree.
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From Tofo Beach Cottages:

I have to write to say that there is really no reason for cancellations if the only reason is fear of xenophobia.  There is absolutely no trouble in any part of Mozambique related to these troubles in South Africa, not even in Maputo.  Garry and I have just travelled from Tofo to Nelspruit and back again and there was no sign anywhere, on the roads, or in towns of villages or anywhere, of any kind of trouble whatsoever.  The border was peaceful… I believe that the media have blown the situation completely out of proportion (as usual) and, although I know of the troubles that have been happening in South Africa, these have not been duplicated in Mozambique.  This is a safe, calm and peaceful country

From Barra Reef Resort:

Russel (owner of Barra Reef Divers) and I arrived to SA after a busy week with the Adventure Dive Challenge 9 – 18 May, on the 28th of May in the early hours of the morning at about 01:10 am!! We left Inhambane (500km north of Maputo) on the 27th 13:00 pm and were critically looking at any signs of unrest or aggression in our town. At Verdino’s, Tara & Barry the British Couple’s Restaurant in town, the “foreigners hang out” was full as usual with no sign of anything that is not normal! On the way to Maputo we stopped twice once at a small town to buy some of the “Mother in-Law” Peri-Peri sauce and once in Xai Xai at the Pharmacy. I climbed out both times with loads of vendors around me with no one even blinking an eye in the directions of aggression? Through Maputo that evening around 18:30 it was hectic as always with the traffic and even more so with the darkness!

You are only a good driver once you have driven through Maputo at night! In all that “craziness” we passed without incident & even at the toll gate in Maputo with quite a long queue, widows wined down, next to other cars no one even blinked at us? At the Komati Poort border gate near Nelspruit (Resano Garcia) later that evening there were almost no cars or people even and we passed as if there were never any unrest in SA?

The only negative thing that did occur, happened last week at the height of the unrest in SA clients did drive back and on the way they were shown the finger over the throat and screamed at.