Aviation Industry Records 50 Per Cent Fuel Supply Shortage

Scarcity of fuel in the aviation industry was pegged at 50 per cent, a reduction of the daily requirement needed by local airlines to operate in the country. The shortage in supply has led to series of delays and cancelled flights facing passengers.

Marketers have blamed the current development on scarcity of foreign exchange, logistics and some of the airline operators owing outstanding billions of naira and allegedly not willing to pay suppliers of aviation fuel, otherwise called JetA1.

General Manager of CITA Aviation Fueling Limited, Thomas Ogungbangbe, at the opening of a stakeholders’ forum on the fuel challenge, said that of about two million litres aviation fuel required daily, only half the size now gets to the operators.

Ogungbangbe stated that the abysmally low supply capacity calls for great concern for stakeholders to rescue the industry from further losses. He also observed that the capacity had steadily declined in the last three years since deregulation of supply, though currently now at its most critical moment.

General Manager and Chief Operating Officer at CITA, Olasimbo Betiku, noticed that the current state of the economy and scarcity of foreign exchange had caught up with the aviation fuel that is 100 per cent imported.

Besides forex, Betiku added that the lack of commensurate development in infrastructure along with population rise and growth in passenger movement in the last two decades had steadily put the industry in dire straits.

 “Between 1986 to 2016, we have seen steady population growth in the country with passenger movement increase from 8.3m  in 2006 to 13.4m in 2016,” he said.