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Nigeria’s aviation growth projection missing in IATA data

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Nigeria's aviation growth projection missing in IATA data

Concerns have been raised over the non capture of Nigeria in a five-year growth projection, as contained in a survey by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

A number of factors, including high investment risk and poor infrastructural base constitute major reasons for the development.

In the study, sighted by Ripples Nigeria on Saturday, IATA categoried the industry’s growth according to the economic potentials of countries under the survey.

It has projected that between 2 to 5 per cent growth will be recorded by the industry, yearly, in the next five years, depending on the categories that each country falls into.
In 2010, AITA predicted 2 to 3 per cent growth in the next 10 years.

Thus, it classified some countries in Europe and America, among them the US, Germany, UK and France in category A+, while others, including China, Japan, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and Spain are in A group.

In category B+, the countries include Russia, South Africa, Israel and Canada, while the B group are Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and india.

In the B class come Turkey, Ghana, Greece and others.

But Nigeria appeared with the group of other countries refered to as “Others’, a situation that has elicited a number of reactions from many stakeholders.

Read also: Aviation sector enters 2017 with fear, sends SOS to govt

The international body further identified some policies and programmes that can better the enhanced growth of the sector, globally.

Among the policies are: open policy on investment, private sector-driven policy and improvement on infrastructure, modern aircraft and airports.

But experts say that Nigeria can only develop its aviation sector, if it could attract more foreign investments in the sector.

A member of a non governmental organisation, the Aviation Round Table, and former Nigeria Airways senior management staff, Chris Aligbe, said the country has no limitation in its aviation growth, if policy makers could do the right thing.

He said all competing factors in the sector have been earlier identified and need commitment for it to attract the needed interest of both local and foreign investors.

Captain Johnson Edwards described as embarrassing that Nigeria could be missing among the major categories by IATA, when in the years past it was among the major regional hubs.

He said: “IATA once projected that Nigeria could create more than 20,000 jobs through the sector, if the required attention is paid to policy direction.”

But Minister of State, Aviation, Hadi Sirika, has said that all efforts aimed at returning Nigeria to its class in the international arena were on.

 

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