Wednesday, February 17, 2010.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon de Ryhove.

Making headlines today:

India's Bharti Airtel doesn't see any funding issues for its planned 9-billion-dollar deal to buy Zain's African assets. It's confident it will seal the takeover by the March 25 deadline.

Bharti said earlier that its total likely payout for buying Kuwaiti group Zain's operations in 15 African countries would be about 9-billion-dollars and 1,7-billion-dollars of net debt on the target unit's books.

Bharti has been hunting for emerging market assets as its home turf becomes fiercely competitive and call charges plummet in the world's fastest-growing mobile market.

Multi-trade shipping line Safmarine plans to introduce a new, direct, fully-containerised shipping service from the Far East to East Africa in March.

The service, dubbed the Mashariki Express, will replace the existing Mombasa Express service, and will offer Safmarine's customers improved transit times and reliability.

The service will start on March 2, when the 2 496 twenty-foot equivalent unit Safmarine Zambezi vessels sets sail from Mombasa, in Kenya, to Tanjung Pelepas, in the Far East.

Also making headlines:

Telkom's fixed-to-mobile call charges to drop 22%.
Aviation company Comair pins its growth hopes on its fleet expansion and not only on the World Cup.
Zimbabwe hotelier Rainbow Tourism Group plans to double its room capacity to take advantage of an expected rise in the number of visitors to the region.
And, higher commodity prices and a pick up in exports should help Namibia's economy recover from the slowdown.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit engineeringnews.co.za.