Day: April 15, 2023

Posted on

Air Seychelles to start flights to Colombo in June

Air Seychelles will offer twice weekly flights to Colombo, Sri Lanka, commencing in June, the airline said on Tuesday.

The inaugural flight will depart the main island of Mahe on June 20 at 10.05 p.m. and expect to arrive in Colombo four hours later. The flights will be served by Air Seychelles’ Airbus A320neo aircraft.

The airline’s chief commercial officer, Charles Johnson, said: “We’re very excited about this opportunity to link Seychelles with Sri Lanka. A destination in its own right with excellent tourist, medical and trading opportunities which all Seychellois will benefit from.”

He added that Air Seychelles’ “upcoming partnership with Sri Lankan Airlines will allow travellers to purchase a single ticket for travel beyond Colombo to other destinations in Asia. This service will drastically reduce current travel times and at prices much lower than currently seen in the market.”

The Colombo service will also offer over 20 connections through a future partnership with Sri Lankan Airlines. This will allow for a one stop connection to numerous destinations. These will include India, Bangladesh, Bangkok in Thailand, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Singapore, and Tokyo in Japan, as well as the highly requested Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

Sandy Benoiton, the airline’s acting chief executive, said that “This new destination will reinforce our regional service and provide enhanced connectivity to the south-east Asia region and beyond. This is a high potential market and we look forward to seeing what lies ahead.”

Air Seychelles currently operates flights to Tel Aviv, Johannesburg, Mumbai, and Mauritius with state-of-the-art Airbus A320neos.

Source: Seychelles News Agency

Posted on

Oceanika calls for industrial fishing vessels to do more to remove FADs in Seychelles’ waters

A not-for-profit organisation, Oceanika, is calling on industrial fishing vessels to make more effort to remove fish aggregating devices (FADs) after fishing, after the NPO removed 24 fish FADs from Seychelles’ waters.

Oceanika, which has offices in Geneva and Thailand and has recently established one in Seychelles, has set an aim of locating and removing FADs in the waters of the Indian Ocean islands.

The organisation recently spent over 20 days at sea to find and remove the devices mostly used by large tuna fishing vessels.

Olivier Manaut, the chairman of Oceanika Seychelles, told SNA that “having seen the issues with regards to the FADs, which are left at sea and end up drifting to the coast and damaging the sea floor and corals, we decided that we need to do something.”

FADs are man-made, usually floating wooden structures with hanging nets to attract fish and these can either be free floating or anchored to the seabed.

When FADs are left at sea, they can also cause problems for marine life including turtles and sharks can become entangled in the floating nets attached.

The government of Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, is very attentive to this issue because of the impact of FADs on the marine environment.

Seychelles is recognised by the international community for its work on environmental protection and has worked for a long time with partners to put in place sustainable solutions for tuna fishing and seek all means to minimise the impact of this fishery.

Manaut said that he has been in regular discussion with the Ministry of Fisheries and the fishing companies that have been receptive to these concerns.

One of the areas all parties have agreed on is to have tracking devices on the FADs to make it easier to locate and remove them.

“At the moment, we have to go at sea and look for the buoys attached to the devices, which makes it very difficult and we might miss a lot of them. If we know their exact location, we can then go directly to each one and remove it,” he explained.

Other local organisations helping to remove FADs from Seychelles’ waters are the Islands Conservation Society (ICS) and Islands Development Company (IDC).

Meanwhile, with 24 FADs removed on their latest outing, Manaut said Oceankia has been in contact with local companies who are looking at ways to recycle these devices.

A young Seychellois company called Brikole, is already very active in the recycling of nets, and is a partner of Oceanika for the reprocessing part of the FADs.

“WASTEA, another Seychellois company, is also our partner, helping us with its expertise and its advice, in addition to these processes to eliminate this waste or reprocess it,” said Manaut.

Source: Seychelles News Agency

Posted on

BNA warns of illegal exercise of “Investimento.ao” entity

The National Reserve Bank of Angola (BNA) warned on Friday, in Luanda, that the entity “Investimento.ao” is not allowed to carry out any financial activity in Angola, such as monetary application.

The BNA warns the commercial banks and the population in general to abstain from any business relationship with the aforementioned entity, because it is performing activities illegally.

“The entity Investimento.ao is not allowed to exercise any financial activity subject to supervision in Angola, namely, the provision of financial services, deposits and monetary applications”, said the note published by the BNA.

According to the BNA, such activities are exclusively reserved to authorized banking financial institutions, whose list can be found on the web page of the Central Bank, at www.bna.ao.

Thus, the Central Bank of Angola also warns the promoters of this entity to refrain from any act that may be qualified as a very serious offence, provided and punishable under current legislation.

The National Reserve Bank of Angola, within the scope of its duties as supervisor of the Angolan financial system, is responsible for authorizing and supervising the activity of financial institutions.

Source: Angola Press News Agency (APNA)