The federal government has been called upon to remove laing costs for carriers of perishable items in order to encourage exports in the country.
The chief executive officer of FMC aviation services limited, Herbert Odika who made this call while speaking with selected journalists also called for a halt in double taxation by aviation agencies in the country.
“For perishable items, if the government can give concession in terms of taxes, I will not subscribe to out rightly removing them but concession in terms of lowering them and out rightly removing landing costs for carriers of these perishable goods to encourage them to come into Nigeria and lift and encourage farmers”
According to Odika, it was time for Nigeria to commence exportation of her items to the outside world while government should learn to concession taxes.
While noting that volume of cargo importation into the country has drastically dropped, the cargo expert urged the federal government to take advantage of the situation to encourage export by providing enabling environment.
He explained that the country was recovering from a lot of debts and that the financial capacity to sustain what was on ground at the moment has been a challenge hence a lot of carrier were re-assessing in coming into the country.
“If you are flying your aircraft at 50 per cent load factor you go back and re-asses the inability of coming into the country. It is not only about signing agreements, it is profit oriented, for now, there is a lot of meltdown especially in the area of cargo and with the current exchange rate in the financial world, its not profitable to import now”.
He advised the minister of state aviation Senator Hadi Sirika to look into how directives were given in the past especially to airline, that accepted directives in the past only for them to run into accumulated bills.
Ifeoma Okeke
