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Foreign airlines reject new terminal in Nigeria’s Lagos airport, Authorities might force move

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Foreign airlines operating in Nigeria have rejected offers by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to relocate their operations into a newly built terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

The Managing Director of FAAN, Captain Rabiu Yadudu, told journalists that the agency might be forced to relocate operations of foreign carriers to the place at the appropriate time.

It is believed that the small size of the new terminal’s aprons, makes it difficult for the foreign carriers’ large jets to be parked there.

“It is unfortunate that some of them (foreign airlines) said they will not move, but we are not ready to compel them to move. We’ll just keep quiet. You cannot be a FAAN client and dictate to us. When the time comes, they must all move. Those that refuse to move want to paint us in a bad light that we don’t have a good terminal, which is not true.” Yadudu said,

Mr. Yagudu also revealed that the agency is not swift to compel the foreign carriers to move at the moment for the purpose of a smooth transition of operations to the new terminal.

“You have to do an operational transfer before you can move. We decided to start moving in phases.”

“We didn’t want everyone to move at the same time. If you remember, when Terminal 5 opened in London, it took others about six months because of some teething challenges. It is only here that people complain. There is nowhere in the world that you have a perfect system. No airport operates in isolation from its environment. The aviation industry keeps evolving when the challenges happen and are tackled immediately.”

Foreign carriers including British Airways, Emirates Airlines, Air France, KLM, and Lufthansa are yet to relocate their operations to the terminal.

The terminal was launched by President Buhari in March, estimated to be worth over $100 million, and is one of the five airports – Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Enugu – that benefited from the 2013 loan deal between Nigeria and China for the building of four new terminals. Port Harcourt and Abuja terminals had been opened since 2018.

 

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No plan to increase taxes, Nigeria’s revenue chief says

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The head of Nigeria’s revenue agency, Zacch Adedeji, has reaffirmed that there is no plan for the introduction of new taxes in the country.

Adedeji, who is the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue, made the position known when the Chief Executive Officer of Guinness Nigeria Plc, Adebayo Alli, led the management team of the company on a visit to the Revenue House in Abuja.

He was quoted as saying, “the President gave a directive that he wants a single digit tax in the country, meaning that the maximum number of taxes we will have after the work of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms will be nine taxes,” in a statement signed by the Special Adviser on Media to the FIRS chairman, Dare Adekanmbi.

“For us at FIRS, we have responded to that directive. We want to grow the pie such that even if we are taking the same percentage of the bigger pie, the result will be huge.

“By God’s grace, we will not introduce additional taxes nor increase any form of tax. We are only determined to increase the pie. We have restructured our operations at FIRS in such a way that we are now effectively carrying out our duty of assessing, collecting and accounting for taxes. We used to have functional types of taxes, but we have identified that the only customers we have are the taxpayers.”

He stated that by restructuring “our operations based on our customers, using their turnover as the basis to categorise them into large, medium, and small,” FIRS has enhanced its customer relations. He continued by saying that President Bola Tinubu wanted to increase Nigerians’ purchasing power in order to promote growth and increase businesses’ capacity for productivity through the recently implemented consumer credit scheme.

The Nigerian government has been working to overhaul the nation’s monetary and fiscal policies since the start of the Bola Tinubu administration. This has resulted in the central bank and the Oyedele-led tax advisory council implementing daring new policies.

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Nigeria’s central bank raises interest rate to 24.75% amid soaring inflation

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Governor Olayemi Cardoso of Nigeria’s central bank has announced that the bank has increased its monetary policy rate by 200 basis points, to 24.75% from 22.75%, as part of its ongoing tightening measures to combat skyrocketing inflation.

This comes after the bank boosted rates by 4 percentage points last month in an attempt to contain pricing pressures, marking the highest rate hike in almost 17 years.

The committee did not convene under Cardoso’s leadership until February, thus this decision was only the second since he entered office in September of last year.

In the aftermath of the removal of subsidies on petrol products in May last year, Nigeria’s economy is experiencing a cost of living crisis that has left millions of people struggling to satisfy their basic requirements. Annual inflation is above 30%, the worst level in nearly three decades.

At a press conference, Cardoso stated that while members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) were still certain that the tightening cycle was necessary to control inflation, they also believed that price pressures had started to ease as of May.

“Considerations of the committee at this meeting focused on the current inflationary pressures and the need to anchor inflation expectations as well as ensure sustained exchange rate stability,” he said.

The value of the naira appreciated by 12% by the end of last week’s trading activities, and has been on the rise so far this week also, exchanging lower than 1,400 per $ on Tuesday.

Recent measures like the removal of subsidies and the double depreciation of the naira have been defended by the government as necessary to boost economic growth and draw in investment, but they have incited public ire and, in some cases, desperation.

More tightening is anticipated in the upcoming two MPC meetings, according to David Omojomolo, Africa economist at Capital Economics, before policymakers back off and maintain stable interest rates.

“We expect Governor Cardoso’s desire to bring the inflation crisis to a close and also strengthen the naira will lead to more tightening,” said Omojomolo.

Following the increase, Nigeria’s sovereign foreign dollar bonds saw an increase. Tradeweb data shows that the 2029 note saw the biggest jump, rising 1.4 cents against the dollar to 97.9 cents at 1344 GMT, its highest level in over two years.

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