The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, Godwin Emefiele has said that there is no law mandating the CBN to make dollars available to foreign airlines operating in Nigeria.
Emefiele disclosed this last week while answering questions from reporters at the CBN headquarters in Abuja following the meeting of the monetary policy committee. The shift occurs during the currency crisis, which prevented foreign airlines from remitting money home.
According to the International Air Transport
Association (IATA), foreign airlines' funds trapped in Nigeria increased from
$450 million in May to $464 million in July. The CBN released $265 million to
airlines operating in the country to settle overdue ticket sales.
Emefiele claims that the CBN is committed to assisting airlines in
paying off their outstanding foreign debt. But the bilateral air services
agreement (BASA) does not require international airlines to bring back all of
their foreign currency gains.
He said, “No law that makes it compulsory that you must buy your
dollars from the central bank. When you put money in your account, what it
means is that you tell your bank to buy your dollar”.
“Your bank will go to the legitimate or approved sources which in
this case is the I&E to buy dollars and pay for your ticket sales
proceeds,”
“If they don’t find, they may resort to the CBN but it doesn’t
mean that the CBN is under compulsion to provide your dollars because it is
good for me to say this so that people don’t just rest on the conclusion that
CBN is under compulsion to provide the dollars.”
“The only thing they will go to their banks or by
extension go to the CBN to say they need will be dollars to import planes or
dollars to import spares or pays for their insurance which is significantly
lower than if they were to remit the entire ticket sales.
“So Nigerian airlines must also be given a chance to
land an equal number of planes in your countries per week in line with the
bilateral air services agreement,” Emefiele stated.
Share this:
Post a Comment