The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said there is no law that mandates it to provide dollars to foreign airlines operating in the country.
CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, made this known after the bank’s monetary policy committee meeting in Abuja.
He said even though the CBN is determined to help airlines to clear the forex backlog, the bilateral air services agreement (BASA) did not mandate foreign airlines to repatriate all their dollar earnings out of the country.
“There is 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,” Emefiele stated.
According to him, the airline sector had always enjoyed priority allocation, in the knowledge that people want to travel and they don’t want to be constrained by the need for them to travel.
“In spite of this, we have seen that the number of travels or naira value of tickets issued by the airlines has increased. We decided to release $265 billion when the pressure was building aggressively.
“We will do everything possible and are determined to clear the backlog and consistently, at all the retail interventions. As long as the bank accounts are funded, we will continue to ensure that the cumulative backlog is cleared,” he assured.
Emefiele asked countries where foreign airlines are domiciled to provide equal landing slots to Nigerian airlines to prevent dollar repatriation issues in line with the BASA.
