Regional : Kenya Airways’ domestic passengers up 35 pct in Dec

Passengers carried by Kenya Airways on its domestic routes rose 35 percent during the past holiday season on the back of increased flights and a new route, the airline said on Friday. The carrier, which is 26 percent owned by Air France-KLM, in October estimated it would carry 3 million passengers in the year through March 2011, up from 2.7 million a year earlier. It said cargo hauled would rise to 60,000 tonnes in the same period from 57,700 in 2009. Although the airline’s strategy hinges on linking Africa to the world through its Nairobi hub, domestic travelers are an important part of its business. It serves the western city of Kisumu and the coast. Soaring demand for travel to the coastal city of Mombasa by holidaymakers led to an increase in the frequency of daily flights from 10 from seven, rising to 16 flights in the run-up to Christmas, Kenya Airways said. Total domestics flights during the period jumped 84 percent, the airline said in a statement, adding a new service to the resort town of Malindi on the north coast had also contributed to the rise in passengers ferried. Its shares were up 1.6 percent at 49.00 shillings. Agencies Kenya food exports underpinned by rising pricesKenya’s horticulture export earnings in 2010 rose by 9 percent, despite a marginal dip in volumes, helped by strong prices for fruit and vegetables, a senior government official said on Friday. “Horticulture brought in 78 billion shillings in foreign exchange in 2010 though the performance was not good overall,” Romano Kiome, permanent secretary at the Agriculture Ministry told Reuters. “Volumes were marginally down by about 1.0 percent.”East Africa’s largest economy earned 71.6 billion shillings from flower, fruit and vegetable exports in 2009, making the sector Kenya’s largest foreign exchange earner ahead of tea and tourism. Export volumes were hurt by the effects of the global financial downturn and flight ban over European airspace last year, an exporters association said. However, earnings were helped by rising prices for foodstuffs, with the United Nations’ food agency (FAO) saying on Wednesday that world food prices hit a record high last month. Agencies