Foreign Airlines’ N597bn Ticket Proceeds Stuck In CBN

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Foreign airlines in Nigeria are unable to access foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria to repatriate their ticket sales proceeds to their home bases.

Top airline executives told our correspondent on Tuesday that over 25 foreign carriers flying into the country had about N597bn ($3bn) ticket sales proceeds unremitted.

According to them, requests for forex made on their behalf by the commercial banks to the CBN have been pending for several months, awaiting the approval of the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele.

The development was said to have made the home offices of some of the foreign carriers to start mulling the idea of reducing flight frequencies into Nigeria.

“We can’t continue like this. Some carriers are mulling plans to reduce flights into Nigeria. In the past eight months, we can’t repatriate our ticket sales proceeds to our head offices; all the foreign airlines have close to $3bn in unremitted ticket sales proceeds pending in the country now,” the country manager of a top foreign carrier, who spoke under condition of anonymity, revealed.

“We have made several applications, but no forex is given to us. Sometimes, some airlines get only $1m approved from a request of say $10m made in some months,” the official added.

Further findings by our correspondent showed that each of the 25 foreign carriers flying into the country had outstanding ticket sales proceeds ranging from $50m to $150m over the past seven to eight months.

Rough estimates by our correspondent showed that the total amount could be above $2bn for all the carriers.

The Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Mr. Ibrahim Mu’azu, could not immediately provide the bank’s reaction to the development.

He told our correspondent that he would need to get in touch with the appropriate department in the central bank to provide a response.

As of the time of filing this report, he had yet to provide a response.

The CBN has been rationing forex in the wake of the plunge in prices of crude oil, Nigeria’s main foreign currency earner.

Several administrative controls aimed at conserving the nation’s foreign exchange reserves have been imposed by the central bank.

Some of these are the ban on forex sale to importers of 41 items, which include private jets, textiles and cement.

The ban also affects buyers of Eurobond, foreign currency bonds and shares.

Apart from the list of 41 items banned from the official forex market, the depleting foreign exchange reserves have made the central bank to prioritise the disbursement of forex to individuals and companies.

It is uncertain if requests to repatriate ticket sales proceeds by foreign airlines are among the CBN’s list of priority items.

Source: Punch News

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