President Danny Faure visited the Seychelles Air Force (SAF) base at Point Larue this morning as part of continuation of his visits to work places.

This is President Faure’s first visit to the Seychelles Air Force as the Commander-In-Chief of the Seychelles People's Defence Forces (SPDF) where he was met by Presidential Salute by guard of honour and received by the Chief of Defence Forces, Brigadier Leopold Payet, Senior SPDF personnel and members of the SAF Unit.

President Faure attended a presentation, where he was addressed by the Commanding Officer of SAF Lt Col. Michael Pouponneau followed by a presentation and video screening which provided him with a brief overview of the history, roles and responsibilities as well various special tasks under the purview of SAF. The presentation was an opportunity for the SAF management to highlight their target and vision as well the challenges they feel are affecting their operations.

The presentation was followed by a tour of the base whereby President Faure was able to view first hand some of the assets and facilities available at the base, such as the administration office, mess and aircrafts.

The President and his delegation then proceeded to the Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) where he was welcomed by the Governor, Ms. Caroline Abel. He was then given a tour of the bank where he met with the staff and also visited its facilities.

President Faure presided meetings with support staff and senior management staff of the bank. He thanked them for their years of service as the bank celebrate its 39th anniversary today and wish them success in the future. The President described the bank as solid and with a bright future ahead, where he requested that they think on how to make contributions that will further improve their institution.

The President also noted that CBS has produced a lot of competent workforce which today some are in the private sector. He said that it is important to continue in having staff professional development and maintain staff welfare in CBS as the one looking after the economy.

“Next year it will be a very important year for the Central Bank of Seychelles as it will be celebrating its 40th anniversary and it will also be ten years since we embarked on a macro-economic programme for the country. I think that it is important that we share the success story of the bank; its evolution and development over the last forty years. The bank has very important role in the reserve of our country, you have surpassed 550 million US dollars and it shows that there has been a lot of good work on the part of the board and the management,” said the President.

He continued, “Today the bank is independent where there is high professionalism in the staff and high quality work that you have produced. Not only does it have experts, technicians but also the support staff that we need to show our gratitude to. I also take note that other countries comes to CBS to seek your expertise and experience that you have learn through the macro-economic programmes to help other countries”.

The Governor said that one of the challenge in financial services is the lack of expertise and that the Central Bank is doing its utmost to continuously build capacity and at the same time contribute to the economy through scholarship and other activities that they intend to launch in the year ahead.