Wole Shadare 
The National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA) has again condemned cross-border trading in air tickets because of huge revenue losses to the country. NANTA President, Yinka Folami, told New Telegraph that it was urgent to serve the notice on cross-border trading because of the alarming frequency of reports about huge losses incurred by travel customers through the purchases by some of their members.
He noted that these losses that go as high as N25 million from some of the cases that have been reported to them are mostly due to the generally non-refundable status of cross-border tickets and the poor service that is associated with them. He further explained that most times, cross-border tickets are highly restricted, changes take longer because of delayed communication due to time zone differences, and incidences of noshows are high since communication is delayed and sometimes absent leading to the loss of N15 million ticket.
No matter how lucrative the initial purchases of cross-border tickets may be, one problem would wipe out all the previous profits, make buyers heavily indebted to the customer, and send him to the police/law enforcement as recent reports have shown. He listed the implications of cross-border trading which include capital flight, further weakening of the economy, consumer effects such as poor services and heavy financial loss to customers, local assets devaluation, threat to local industry and eventual job loss.
The NANTA boss said over the past two and half months, they have been meeting with all airlines, Global Distribution System (GDS) companies, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), and FCCPC, adding that they were now scheduled to meet the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo. His words: “Our message to all has been single-minded; fair play, protection of our market, and strengthening NANTA.
We would do a comprehensive report via a general Town Hall Meeting (virtual) on the 100th day of the present executive administration. “However, pending that, it is urgent to serve this notice on cross-border trading, because of the alarming frequency of reports about huge losses incurred by travel customers through the purchases by some of our members.
“These losses that go as high as N25 million from some of the cases that have been reported to us are mostly due to the generally non-refundable status of cross-border tickets and the poor service that is associated with them.” Contrary to what many think, Folami said the International Air Transport Association (IATA) did not fix Return on Equity (ROE) after studying closely that all the figures that IATA publish were from the FMDQ dashboard of the I&E FX Window, with a 2-day lag.
He said: “However, this practice by IATA; applying ROE daily, which many times ends up being significantly higher than parallel market rates, leaves room for speculation, encourages buying USD from the parallel market, and purchasing cross-border tickets. All of these put further pressure on the naira, with harmful consequences on our market.
“This issue of ROE application by IATA is on the agenda of our discussions with the government. We need to clarify if IATA is authorised to apply ROE daily, with a 2-day lag. Pending that, it is instructive for IATA to note that the market is hurting.” He clarified that while they are not against the entry of global players into the Nigerian market, global players had the responsibility to play fair and not undermine the market.
“The Executive Council of NANTA frowns against the merchandise of global fares that are not available in our market. This results in declining local sales and a deficit for all local players. We have promised the government that we would fish out some of these global merchants and report them. The Nigeria market has lost about 40 per cent share and this is not good for our BSP reporting. We advise them to stop eroding the Nigeria Market,” he added.
