Libyan Transportation Sector: Aviation, Maritime and Terrestrial

View an exclusive interview with Abdel-Qader Mohamed Ahmed Al-Ayib, Minister of Transportation. According to the minister, “The Ministry of Transportation has 3 branches: aviation, maritime and terrestrial.”

His excellency agrees that the infrastructure has been damaged in all three of these areas during the revolution or during the pre-revolution period and all the projects have been detained. Thus, the Ministry of Transport has to take on a huge reconstruction of the infrastructure in Libya.

The plan is to spend in excess of 2 billion Libyan Dinar on reconstruction efforts. The minister explains: “In the aviation sector we plan on building new airports and also rebuilding and maintaining the existing airports. In the maritime sector we are also going to have some new seaports, some of which have their tenders already published and we also have to rebuild the existing ones, which will encompass large projects. When it comes to the roads, we have a huge road network in Libya as we are such a vast country. We have a big project to connect the eastern border with Egypt to the western border with Tunisia. This road will cover a distance of over 2,000km and will be funded by the Italian government. Works will start very soon from the eastern side. We also have to maintain the existing road network which I believe entails about 3,000km of roads. Most of those roads have been assigned to some companies to work on; we are now waiting to be able to revive their projects. Some road projects are still being investigated but within 2 months we hope to start most of the road projects.”