International Air Transport Association (IATA) Monday ranked Nigeria and Venezuela as two countries with highest number of airline"™ funds trapped in their countries.
This is coming at a time the clearing house for global airlines is engaging the Federal Government to ensure that issues with trapped funds are resolved.
Speaking at a press briefing in Abuja, Samson Fatokun, area manager, South West Africa, IATA, said international airline"™ funds in Nigeria as of March 2016 stood at $575 million, while Venezuela"™s trapped airline"™ funds stood at $3.6 billion.
He stated that Venezuela"™s pending dollar disbursements to airlines had fallen to around $3.6 billion after the government released some of the funds held up by the country"™s currency controls.
Airlines have for months struggled to repatriate revenue from ticket sales due to delays in both Nigeria and the South American nation"™s 12-year-old exchange controls, with trapped cash peaking at around $4.1 billion over the summer.
As a result of the problem, international airlines resorted to selling their tickets in dollars because of their inability to access their monies trapped in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
International airlines normally sell their tickets in naira and then approach the CBN for the dollar equivalent to take back to their respective countries…
