insights

By Georges Chung Tick Kan
Analysis
Senior Economic Adviser
to the Prime Minister of Mauritius
Africa-Asia Air Corridor:
A New
Economic
Pillar in the
Making
The American economist
and Russian born Simon
Kuznets, who won the Nobel
Prize in Economics in 1971,
made the observation that
countries which achieved
the fastest progress in their
fight against poverty were
those who reached out
geographically to the world.
In its most effective operating
mode hopefully to be achieved
by 2020, the Africa-Asia Corridor
passing through Mauritius and
Singapore as hubs, which will
officially be inaugurated on March 14
,is expected to significantly facilitate
movements of tens of millions
people and also thousands of tons
of goods between the two fastest
growing continents of the world.
What is the Corridor all
about?
First, it is a 7-hour non-stop flight
between Mauritius and Singapore.
For the time being, Air Mauritius
has planned a 3-weekly flights that
also includes available capacity for
transporting goods in the belly. But
more significantly, once in Changi
Airport of Singapore, travelers
have the option of continuing their
journey to as many as 200 Asian
destinations in the same day, many
of them in the next 2 to 3 hours, to
the most important cities of China,
Japan, Korea, Indonesia and even
Australia. Under the assumption
that Air Mauritius can indeed sign
code-sharing deals with the most
important airlines of these countries,
travelers will proceed seamlessly and
efficiently to their final destination.
In the same manner, tourists and
businessmen from all parts of Asia
will use Changi as hub on their way
to Mauritius and other countries of
the Indian Ocean as well as some
countries of the African continent.
“The African continent
is very much unknown
to the Asians as a
continent to discover
for both leisure and
business. Within our
own ecosystem, many
activities still need to be
done to transform us as
an international travel
hub.”
The natural advantage of the Corridor
in terms of travel time over other
alternative routes to reach the East
Coast of Africa for example thus
appears to be unassailable for those
traveling from Asia.
The Hub Rationale
It is natural for big rich countries or
large cities to have hub airports not
only to handle travel trips of their
citizens but also to act as transit
airports for onward journeys. Transit
times are spent in busy shopping
locations within the airport with all
the amenities available to cater for
all the needs of transit passengers.
However diminutive countries
like Singapore and Dubai have
taken advantage of their strategic
geographical location to transform
themselves into the most attractive
and among the busiest hubs in the
world. Dubai has the largest duty
free shops and Singapore plans to
be the most attractive food outlet
while Frankfurt has even a casino.
Airport efficiency has become over
the years a determining factor in
the ecosystem of the travel trade
industry in the world.
The signing in October last of
the Hub Agreement between Changi
airport and Air Mauritius is interesting
in many ways for our country. Changi
airport has handled 55 million
passengers in 2015 of which 18
million are foreign tourists spending
a few hours of transit time before
taking an onward flight to a third party
country. In 2014, more than 200 000
tourists from several cities of China
stopped in Changi for a few hours
before proceeding to Maldives, one
of our major competitors for Chinese
and other Asian tourists. South
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