Vanuatu turns to World Bank for swift runway rehab

Transcript

The World Bank is set to come to Vanuatu's assistance for a swift rehabilitation of the country's main airport runway.

This follows a decision by Air New Zealand, Qantas and Virgin Australia to suspend flights to Vanuatu, due to concerns over the safety of the runway at Port Vila's Bauerfield airport.

A 2015 World Bank offer of an almost $US 60 million loan to Vanuatu to upgrade the runway, which was earlier brushed aside by the Sato Kilman-led government, is still active.

The World Bank's country director for the Pacific, Franz Drees-Gross, told Johnny Blades the runway issues go back many years.

FRANZ DREES-GROSS: There have been several attempts over the past seven or eight years to some smaller repairs, very much ad hoc repairs that never amounted to a comprehensive rehabilitation. And I think now we've reached the stage where the state of the runway is so poor that you can see that two major carriers have suspended their flights.

JOHNNY BLADES: Under the deal, who is to do the work? Is this a soft loan-type arrangement?

FD-G: It is a soft loan. It's a credit, we call it, to Vanuatu. It has ten years of grades, 40 years of repayments, so it's a very soft loan. And the way that it works is that the government procures the works, in this case both the emergency rehabilitation it's going to need in the next couple of weeks and then the major overhaul of the runway. It procures those works according to World Bank guidelines.

JB: Which government are you dealing with? Obviously, the Sato Kilman-led (caretaker) government, we're not sure whether they'll be the government which emerges from this current election process, with the parliament yet to sit to elect a prime minister. I guess you have to wait.

FD-G: Well, we've received a letter from the the Sato Kilman government in its current caretaker role, inviting the World bank to field a team as quickly as possible given the situation in Port Vila. We're doing that, we're sending a team on February 8th, our full technical team. We have a pavement expert who is actually on the ground right now looking at the runway. So we're dealing with the caretaker government. we're also dealing with the more technical people in Airports Vanuatu Ltd, in the Ministry of Infrastructure, Public Utilities and some other stakeholders, both inside and outside the government.

JB: So the Kilman administration has dropped their plans to go with the tobacco company for building the new airport?

FD-G: We don't know about that. They've confirmed to us that they would like to move forward with us. The loan was always on the table, it's still on the table. What I think we need to do is be very clear about... I think there's greater agreement on what needs to be done, which is an emergency rehabilitation now, in a matter of weeks, not months, just to get the airport functional again, and basically to tie over the airport until the full scale rehabilitation can be contracted, and the full scale rehabilitation that'll take months, not weeks. But the short-term rehabilitation can be done relatively quickly if we can agree the week of the 8th of February on the exact measures that need to be taken.

JB: Do you envisage that those emergency repairs will be enough in the interim to get Air New Zealand and Qantas flying back in?

FD-G : That's our hope. I think the idea is this airport needs a comprehensive rehab. And it needs a 2,600 metre runway - not more, not less. And I think that the runway can be made safe and operational at least for a period of six to twelve months, until the major works are fully underway and accomplished.