Nouakchott gives up its airport to an Emirati company

Mauritanians have agreed to talk about their country's concession to operate the airport in Nouakchott - the international airport in the country - for an Emirati company belonging to the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The government has officially confirmed its concession from the airport. Its details are taken, ambiguous and ambiguous.

Under the new deal, which has caused a stir in social media, AFROPORT will operate the Nouakchott airport for 25 years.

Mauritanian and UAE sides have been able to hide for months on the controversial deal, which was announced only two days ago, although it was signed a few weeks ago, according to Mauritanian officials.

The disclosure came after the Mauritanian news agency published a detailed report that included the course, details and privileges obtained by the UAE company against the deal, and its negative effects on the Mauritanian company that operated the airport and its negative impact on Mauritanian Aviation Company.

The deal revived questions about the relationship between the Mauritanian and UAE regimes and the size of Abu Dhabi's economy in Mauritania, as well as the economic and political criteria under which Nouakchott relinquished its most important airports to the Abu Dhabi Emirate.

details
The deal stipulates that the airline will operate the Mauritanian airport for 25 years with benefits and privileges. Mauritania Airports Company will operate the airport and cancel the huge financial benefits that the Mauritanian Aviation Company has benefited from Handeling services.

The Mauritanian government attributed this decision to rationalization of expenditures, the search for new resources and the development of the structure and capacity of the airport by shifting it from a burden on the Mauritanian budget to an economic resource generating financial revenues to the country.

"The company that received the Nouakchott International Airport owns the Mauritanian state 5% of its shares and will receive the same percentage of its profits," Economy and Finance Minister Ould Ajay told a news conference accompanied by Transport Minister Amal Bent Mouloud.

"The agreement between the government and the investor is a direct foreign investment agreement," he said, adding that the agreement also grants the Mauritanian state "ownership of all future facilities."

"The company will have a special tax system that will be submitted to the Council of Ministers and the Parliament for approval, paying 5 per cent of its turnover, whether profits or losses," he said.

Among these benefits is the establishment of tourism facilities and hotels near the airport and the provision of employment and quality services attractive, and work to compete with the airport counterparts in the region due to the strategic location of the capital Nouakchott.

The airport is also not under construction. It was part of a commercial deal whereby the Mauritanian government relinquished the land of the old airport to a newly established private company in return for building a new airport.

While the government believes that this type of deals reduces the burden of construction and returns to the state with economic and construction benefits important opponents and activists see it as one of the most prominent aspects of corruption under the current system.

"Nouakchott airport was ambiguous - from the construction deal to its delivery to the Emiratis," said one Mauritanian blogger.

If the deal for the establishment of the airport has caused great controversy because of what the parties see against the corruption and nepotism of the award of the deal, the name also caused a wide controversy, as the supporters of the label it represents a medal of recognition for the martyrs of the battle of the mother of Tunisia, which killed soldiers of the French colonial army, While others launched an anti-label campaign, asserting that the "Tunisian mother" was nothing more than a battle between rival Mauritanian tribes.

Mystery and Losses
The Mauritanian news agency had spoken in the report, which revealed the deal before announcing the deal, saying that on March 8, the cabinet overthrew the director general of Mauritania Airports Company without disclosing the reasons for his dismissal. He asked his successor on March 20 Last March, the deal was signed 12 days after he was appointed out of the limelight. In a state of secrecy, the Ministry of Equipment and Transport was absent from the Gaza Strip and the company's experts were removed from it.

She said that the practical entry into the deal granting the only air gateway to Mauritania requires the presence of the delegation of the United Arab Emirates arrived in Mauritania on a private plane in mid-May 2018, and this "secret" delegation held meetings with a number of Mauritanian officials whose names were also kept secret.

She pointed out that the Mauritanian news agency (official) covered the visit of the UAE delegation, but it was remarkable not to mention any names of the members of the UAE delegation or the names of the Mauritanian officials whom the delegation met.

The report of the agency will stop at the damage caused by the deal, as it will cause serious damage to the Mauritanian Airports Company by depriving it of large financial revenues received from the airlines that use Nouakchott International Airport and up to the company's expenses, especially those related to salaries and the operation of domestic airports. On the route of Tbilisi in the course of several official companies before it.

It said the new company had completely excluded Mauritanian airport workers from domestic airports, despite the acquisition, according to the deal, of financial revenues of tens of millions of ounces of the Mauritanian company.

Under the lights of the UAE
The issue of granting the deal continues to interact at the level of social networking sites, and despite the great accolades of the airport management deal from political figures and bloggers affiliated with the Authority, it has met with opposition and condemnation of personalities, bloggers and media who saw it as a concession from an important pillar of sovereignty in Mauritania that could pave the way for concessions Broader, especially in light of a broad talk about the progress of negotiations on the delivery of the port of Nouakchott - which represents an important lung for Mauritania and a number of African countries - to another company in a deal that is ambiguous and controversial.

"They plundered the land and swindled the air and the sea for a quarter of a century in suspicious dark deals," wrote opposition MP Mohammad al-Amine Sidi Mouloud in his Facebook page. "If you hand the country over to another group, it will surely be better than you thousands of times."

Madnoun said the incident in the Yemeni city of Socotra, which residents complained of what they described as an occupation of the UAE, and announced their refusal to hand over the Mauritanian flight to the UAE, especially as it may be used for non-commercial purposes.