‘Aviation, Catalyst For Economic Growth’
For any economy to grow, aviation is a crucial component that helps to speed up growth, as it cuts across spheres such as travel, tourism, agricultural production and distribution, trade and commerce, rural development, manufacturing, oil and the non-oil sector.
This was the view of former Secretary General of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Mohammed Tukur, in Lagos. Specifically, he said that the ripple effect and the value chain aviation creates is immeasurable.
He noted that Nigeria has not yet tapped into the full potential of this economic critical sector, especially with the large market that the country possesses. Current statistics shows that the Nigerian market on its own is a market servicing over 600 million people in West and Central Africa; this is half of the continent, twice the United States and far greater than continental Europe.
It is against this backdrop that the country is taking steps to rejig, revamp and re-strategise aviation to achieve maximum benefits. This is coming at a time the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Abubakar Sirika, highlighted some concern that had in the last two decades bedevilled the aviation sub-sector and government’s plan of action to address some of these challenges in the shortest time possible.
Among issues raised were security, infrastructure and a whole gamut of challenges that have been used as indexes to rate the country’s aviation low despite its market size.
Sirika, who gave a presentation on government’s activities in the subsector, highlighted some challenges, one of which is the absence of a national carrier, which had hindered the country’s maximisation of the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA), Multilateral Air Services Agreement (MASA) and Open skies advantages.
According to Sirika, the lack of a national carrier has caused the country capital flights, lack of image and prestige and a lot of other issues bordering on the choice of an appropriate business model.
Sirika said that government needed to establish a national carrier in order to gain optional benefits from BASA, stating that the national carrier will be publicly owned and listed with institutional investors. The Minister of State also said that once established, the carrier will form alliances with others to increase reach, flexibility and routes.
Closely knitted to the national carrier challenge is that of the lack of a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility, something that is absent in the whole of West and Central Africa and has led to high maintenance cost of Nigerian airlines giving them nightmares as that transaction is done in foreign exchange.
He said that government would create an enabling environment for the establishment of an MRO facility that will attract clientele from Africa and all over the world, adding that the facility will be encouraged to start manufacturing of aircraft spare parts with the intent of going into manufacturing for the long-term like Brazil and Ethiopia. Because of the nature of aviation, a lot of transactions in the business are done with foreign currency, which is currently a challenge.
Aircraft acquisition, purchase of spare parts, maintenance and training are also all paid for in foreign currency.
However, Nigerian airlines sell their tickets in Naira and have to pay for the services enumerated above in forex. Sirika’s said the ministry is working with Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Ministry of Budget and National Planning and Ministry of Finance to include airlines in priority list of foreign exchange allocation.
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