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AFGHANISTAN – COOPERATION ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL WITH GERMANY
The Australian and German Governments today announced a joint initiative to install a new air traffic control system in Afghanistan.
This initiative represents an important contribution to the international community’s growing efforts to provide Afghanistan with the kind of infrastructure and expertise that will allow the Afghan people to assume greater responsibility for their national development.
The Wide Area Multilateration (WAM) system will modernise and improve the safety and coordination of air traffic control in Afghanistan.
It will also allow the Government of Afghanistan to increase the amount of revenue it collects from overflight taxation, through a nationwide network of aircraft tracking devices.
By helping to provide a steady and reliable source of revenue, the system will introduce greater certainty to Afghanistan’s budget planning processes. This is vital in a country that currently has very few reliable means of raising revenue to meet its urgent development needs.
Today’s announcement sees the implementation of an important outcome of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to Germany in July, during which he and German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel confirmed their strong support for Afghanistan’s efforts towards development, peace and stability.
Australia will contribute €3.5 million (A$5.8 million) to the project over three years. These funds will be used to install reliable power generation systems at each of the WAM sites. Given the inconsistent nature of the power supply in many parts of Afghanistan, the provision of reliable power sources will be crucial to the project’s success.
By using solar energy, these systems will provide a power source that is also ‘clean and green’.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the project was signed today in Berlin by the Australian Ambassador-Designate Mr Peter Tesch and the State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office Dr Wolf-Ruthart Born in the presence of the Deputy Minister of the Afghan Ministry for Transport and Civil Aviation, Mr Raz Muhammad Alami.
17 December 2009