Ghana Airport Company Limited's Decoupling Experience: Achievements, Challenges and Policy Lessons

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine conditions or factors that necessitated the decision to decouple and/or create the Ghana Airport Company Limited. It examined the aims, achievements, effects, challenges and implications of decoupling for airport services management. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discu-ssion was used to obtain information from purposively selected key informants. Interviewees were grouped into senior, middle and lower management levels actively involved in the decoupling exercise; these were purposively selected and interviewed. The study findings showed that the decoupling reform was introduced as a response to the internal problems confronting the air transport sector at the time. The reform is in accordance with ICAO standards aimed to create a commercial wing for air transport management and recoup revenue from air travel services. Under ICAO standards and concomitant reform, GCAA retained its oversight responsibility as the regulatory body and provider of air navigation services whereas GACL takes charge of air transport service delivery. Key changes introduced included the creation and amalgamation of departments with new functions. The orga-nizational structure was also modified in the process, and infrastructural modernization, leading huge profits/revenue, administrative efficiency. There was also increased number of airline operators and proper management of human resource functions are among the achievements identified by the interviewees. Interviewees described the decoupling reform as unfinished they believed that another decoupling reform will have to follow the current one and will offer the GCAA the responsibility for oversight and regulation of the air transport sector after the necessary legislations and procedures have been satisfied. Key problems identified by interviewees before and during the decoupling were asset sharing, human resource issues; especially issues of job security, danger of redundancy and unattractive salaries and recruitment. Significant progress has been made following the decoupling reform in Ghana's airport sector about five years ago. But the issue of asset sharing remained a major challenge to full and successful decoupling reform implementation.