‘Business aviation spend over $305bn on equipment maintenance annually’

It has been revealed that business aviation comprising of private and charter jet operators spend at least $305 billion on maintenance of their equipment annually outside the country.

This is as the operators also contribute at least $2.5 billion yearly to the development of the Nigerian economy.

These were revealed over the weekend in Lagos by Segun Demuren, Managing Director of EAN Aviation, in his opening remarks at the two-day Nigerian Business Aviation Conference, NBAC, 2016 with the theme ‘Sustaining Nigeria’s Position on the African Business Aviation Landscape.’

Demuren attributed the capital flight to the absence of a viable maintenance hangar facility in the country, stressing that if the country had a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, MRO, facility, such amount of money would have remained in the country.

Demuren also decried the non-availability of cheap financing from financial institutions in the country for business aviation unlike their counterparts in Europe, America and Asia that have access to finance, adding that inadequate infrastructure also contributed immensely to their sordid state in the country.

According to Demuren, despite the fact that business aviation was not so popular in the country, the sub-sector contributes significantly to revenue generation for aviation sector in particular and Nigeria as a whole and called on the Federal Government to ease some of the challenges faced by the operators.

He further declared that Nigeria and South Africa take the lead in the number of private jets across the continent.

According to him, the number of private jets in Nigeria had grown to 140 from a handful in 1988.

He disclosed that Nigeria and South Africa alone are responsible for about 50 per cent of private jets in the continent, but decried the imposition of 5 per cent import duty tax on aircraft by the government.

He insisted that since Nigeria was a signatory to the Cape Town Convention, the government ought not to have imposed the 5 per cent import duty on operator, stressing that operators were suffering from double taxation in the country.

He said, “There is a lot of misconception about business aviation in Nigeria. Some think it is just for luxury, but I can tell you here that only one per cent of our customers patronize us for luxury and pleasure, while the remaining 99 per cent is strictly for business.

Most of our airports apart from Lagos and Abuja lack adequate infrastructure that will enable us to carry out our business effectively. Also, we don’t carry out maintenance in the country because of lack of MRO.”

Demuren also said that business aviation supports just 5,000 jobs in Nigeria while it supports over one million jobs in the United States of America, USA, adding that the sub-sector also generates $219 billion to the US economy yearly.

Ifeoma Okeke