The beleaguered Kenya Airways is currently facing more and more challenges as trading in shares has been suspended for another year.
The East African airline’s plight has been publicised on Wednesday by the local stock exchange which said Wednesday.
This comes after the troubled national carrier battles to return to profitability and just last month, Kenyan President William Ruto said the government was ready to sell its entire stake in the airline.
As things stand, the Kenyan government owns a 48.9 percent stake in Kenya Airways, while Air France-KLM has 7.8 percent.
Kenya Airways has been languishing deep in the red for years and its shares have been suspended since July 2020, in the midst of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic that hit global air travel.
“The extension of suspension seeks to enable the company (to) complete it’s operational and corporate restructure process,” the Nairobi Securities Exchange said in a statement.
“I’m willing to sell the whole of Kenya Airways,” Ruto told Bloomberg News last month during his first visit to the United States as Kenyan president.
“I’m not in the business of running an airline that just has a Kenyan flag, that’s not my business.”
The airline’s struggles are well documented and they were exacerbated in November when pilots staged a days-long strike that led to hundreds of flight cancellations and thousands of passengers stranded.
News24 reports that Kenya Airways shares were first suspended in 2020 as lawmakers were considering a plan — since dropped — for the state to take full ownership of the carrier.
“The airline, whose slogan is “The Pride of Africa”, was founded in 1977 following the demise of East African Airways and now flies more than four million passengers to 42 destinations annually,” it reported.
“But it not made a profit since 2012, and the government has pumped in millions of dollars to keep it afloat.”
Last month, in announcing a new $447 million loan for Kenya under a 38-month aid programme, the International Monetary Fund called for progress on structural reforms in the East African country.
The IMF highlighted that “addressing vulnerabilities” at Kenya Airways as well as the majority state-owned utility Kenya Power was “urgent”.
In August, the airline reported a staggering $81.5 million half-year loss citing high fuel costs, though this was a marked improvement on the $94.6 million loss in the period the year before.
