06 January 2011
BEIRUT: The league of former Middle East Airline (MEA) employees honored company chairman Mohammad Hout Wednesday by granting him an award of appreciation for his efforts to improve the company’s overall performance and economic situation.
Attended by Labor Minister Butros Harb, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh and other officials and employees, the ceremony took place at the MEA headquarters in Beirut.
Salameh opened the ceremony with a speech saying that the Central Bank has supported MEA for over 13 years by financing it with millions of dollars which was considered to be very costly for Banque du Liban.
“We used to finance MEA through Intra Investment Company at first but then we started doing this directly,” Salameh said.
Salameh added that MEA suffered heavy losses in the past as a result of the successive wars and complicated political events that plagued Lebanon throughout the years.
“This is when the Lebanese government called upon the Central Bank to support the company directly, which prompted us to chose Mohammad Hout as director of MEA,” he said. “We truly believe that we made the right decision because Hout succeeded in restoring MEA to profitability and improving the company’s image and reputation.”
MEA recorded $105 million in profits in 2009, a record amount in the carrier’s history. MEA, in an attempt to improve services and fly to more destinations, has acquired 15 brand new Airbus planes over the past three years.
However, Hout has previously announced that he expects the company’s profits to decline by 40 percent in 2010 due to political tensions and unfair competition by some Arab and foreign companies caused by the government’s failure to implement the laws and regulations governing the open sky policy which was approved in 2001.
Salameh said that tourists and visitors to Lebanon have repeatedly praised the MEA for the quality of the flights it offers. “The company has also started giving us profits on our investment and this reflects MEA’s success in getting rid of its deficit while being capable of offering excellent quality of services,” he said.
For his part, Hout said the company lost more than $750 million between 1975 and 2001 due to the wars that took place in Lebanon. “We started with our reform plan in 2001 and we were able to succeed mainly because of the support of the Central Bank governor,” he said. – The Daily Star
Copyright The Daily Star 2011.
