It’s Not Compulsory For CBN To Provide You Dollars, Emefiele Tells Foreign Airlines

The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has said that it is unjust to deny local carriers landing slots in the countries where they have a Bilateral Air Service Agreement.

The apex bank boss said this while reacting to the unremited funds belonging to foreign airlines and the denial of landing slots in countries where their airlines have weekly slots in Nigeria.

He spoke at the 287th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee on Tuesday.

As foreign exchange scarcity bites hard on the economy, about $465m belonging to airlines were trapped as the likes of Emirates Airline threatened to shutdown Nigerian operations.

But the CBN settled $265m out of the backlogs.

Speaking on the development, Emefiele said it is grave injustice for some airlines to have as much as 21 weekly landing slots in Nigeria when their countries have denied Nigerian airlines landing space.

According to him, foreign airlines are given preference in Nigeria, but have failed to fulfil their own part of the BASA agreement.

He said “We would like to appeal to the countries where the foreign airlines are domicile or where their flights originate that they should please give Nigerian airlines also a chance to land their aircrafts in their countries, also in line with the Bilateral Air Service Agreement.

“You cannot be having 21 landing slots in a week from your country into Nigeria and yet you have not given a Nigerian airline that wants to land in your country even up to seven landings. For us as Nigeria, this is unacceptable and Nigerians must stand and criticize this which is not acceptable.

“When you give Nigerian airlines opportunity to land in your country, people using these airlines will pay naira, they pay naira and they will not come to the Central Bank or any bank to say they want to remit their sales. I have to be selfish to defend my country.”

Emefiele said the only thing the local airlines will approach their banks for will be dollars to import planes, dollars for spare parts or payments for their insurance.

“So Nigerian airlines must be given also a chance to land equal number of planes in your country per week in line with the Bilateral Air Service Agreement. That is what we are begging for,” he said.

He also clarified that the CBN is not obliged to exchange dollars for foreign airlines.

According to the apex bank boss, the remaining backlogs of unrepatriated funds will be cleared as the sector is a sector that has always enjoyed dollar allocation.

Emefiele said, “Whereas, other non-important sector- when you are importing finished goods, items that are not considered to be an item that does not contribute positively or priority sector of the economy, of course, you will get ten per cent or 15 per cent. But for other sectors where they are priority like the airlines, we always granted them the kinds of priority that they deserve, because we know people travel and they do not want to be constrained by the need for them to travel.

“In spite of these, we have seen that a number of travels or naira value of travel ticket issued by the airlines has increased and when the pressure was building aggressively, we decided to release the money ($265m).

“Yes, we will do everything possible and we are determined to clear the backlogs and we will consistently as long as their accounts with the banks are funded. The airlines or the foreign airlines are saying this because they said that we should respect the Bilateral Air Service Agreement that says the proceeds of all their ticket sales must be repatriated out of the country. It did not say that you must repatriate all your dollars in the central bank.”

He explained that there is no law that makes it compulsory that foreign airlines must buy their dollars from the central bank.

Emefiele added, “When you put your money in your account, what it means is that you tell your bank to buy you dollars, your bank will go to the legitimate or approach sources which in this case is the I&E to buy dollars.

“Yes, if they don’t find, they may resort to CBN, but it does not mean the CBN is under compulsion to provide your dollars.”