Mohammed Shosanya
Dr. Gabriel Olowo, the President of Aviation Round Table (ART) has advocated the need for the federal government to consider barter arrangement with foreign airlines over the controversy surrounding the 818.2m blocked funds.
He said,the Central Bank of Nigeria, could engage the governments of the individual foreign airlines and work out the modalities for crude oil exchange if it was legitimate.
According to him,the federal government in 1985 under the regime of Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, exploited the same option with Brazil and a few other countries when the country was facing foreign exchange challenges.
He said: “This ever growing airline home remittance and its attendant embarrassment on Nigeria by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), will it be out of place to think of barter?
“Engage the individual governments of these airlines if they will pay the airlines in exchange for our crude oil if it is legitimate. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at his first coming did barter trade with Brazil and others.”
IATA had earlier in the week, raised the alarm that foreign airlines blocked funds in Nigeria had increased to $818.2 million from $744 million as at the end of March.
It said the figure made Nigeria the country with the most trapped funds in the world.
A statement by Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director-General put the total trapped funds in the world at $2.27 billion as at April, 2023.
Apart from Nigeria, other four countries also mentioned in the trapped funds saga are Bangladesh; $214.1 million, Algeria; $196.3 million, Pakistan; $188.2 million and Lebanon; $141.2 million.
IATA maintained that the top five countries account for 68 per cent of blocked funds worldwide.
He warned that rapidly rising levels of blocked funds are a threat to airline connectivity in the affected markets.
He emphasized that the industry’s blocked funds have increased by 47 per cent to $2.27 billion in April 2023 from $1.55 billion in April 2022.
He declared that airlines could not continue to offer flight services in countries where they have found it difficult to repatriate their funds and called for quick action to address the situation.
