 As 2021 comes to an end, the aviation industry was forced to contend with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and recession, which experts say is the worst since 1983. But as the industry recovers, it has also seen the commencement of plans by the Minister of Aviation to concession for international airports, announcement of date for the setting up of a national carrier, a position of new aircraft by airlines, arms press of the NG Eagle and the Eero, politics of the bilateral agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria, among others. We will focus on these major highlights as it affected the industry this year. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Al-Qadouni. Welcome back. President Mohammad Buhari has signed the 2022 Appropriation Bill of 17.126 trillion Naira into law. The President signed the national budget on Friday at the Council Chamber of the President Chevella in Abuja. The Appropriation Bill was presented to the President by his senior special assistant, Senit, on National Assembly matters, Senit to Babajiti Amor Buhari. While signing the budget, the President was flanked by the President of the Senit, Ahmed Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Bajabiamila. The Minister of Finance, Bajit and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed also witnessed the signing of the budget. These comes a week after lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate chambers of the National Assembly passed the budget of 17.126 trillion Naira, increasing the benchmark price of crude from $57 to $62 per barrel. During the plenary on Wednesday last week, the Senit had passed the 2022 budget of Senate President Lawan gave an assurance that the bill would be sent to the President for recent, the following day. A federal government says it will complete 10 highways in the second quarter of 2022. It is Zainab, Sukuk funding and Nigel Labour Congress is lamenting rising costs of goods and has cautioned against fuel price inquiries. Those were some of the stories which made headlines in the last week of December. Take a look. About eight federal highways were completed by the federal government this year, while 10 others are projected for completion in the second quarter of 2022. It's been reported that five of the completed eight highways had already been inaugurated and handed over to various states and communities where the projects were located. The Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola recently stated that the Sukuk funding option which the federal government adopted was currently aiding the progress of work on 44 roads across the country. Nigeria and other emerging economies have to think twice before raising electricity tariffs as such steps will push inflation in 2022 World Bank has warned. In its latest commodity market outlook forecast, the World Bank indicated that the prices of electricity which peaked at 80% higher this year compared to 2020 will remain high next year. It's however said prices will start to decline in the second half of the year as supply constraints ease. Amid currency crisis and fluctuation in oil prices, the country's gross foreign reserves dipped by nearly $600 million in December alone. This raises fresh concern about the short to medium term stability of the foreign exchange market. The figure closed at $49 billion on December 22 as against $41.19 billion bringing the net gain within the period to minus $598.93 million. The last reported figure in the month as a press time minus $40.59 billion was the lowest since October 18, 2021. Then the gross reserves figure was $40.39 billion. It remained in an upswing thereafter reaching a recent all-time high of $41.82 billion on October 29 before it started a gradual but consistent decline. Now the relaxation of travel restrictions occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased economic activities during the year drove recovery in the aviation sector in the first nine months of 2021. Airlines and other allied companies contributed the most to the aviation sector. Between January and September this year output in the sector rose to $146.6 billion there from $114.2 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2020. Now joining us now to review the major highlight is the president of the S Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, Atsun, Elytras, Amadu. Good afternoon to you, Elytras. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. Good afternoon, Justin. Compliments of the season. Yeah, compliments of the season to you and happy new year in advance. All right, Elytras, let's just get straight into the issue. 2021 was more like a year of recovery for the aviation sector, you know, having witnessed a tremendous downfall in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was just all over the world. And of course the aviation sector was the hardest hit. But a bit of recovery, you know, was made and there were talks of concession and then of course, you know, bilateral service agreement. But in your opinion, what would you say was the reason why we had a bit of a comeback this year? Well, thank you, Justin. I think it's just about the resilience of the Nigerian aviation industry. We've got a market, we've got airlines that have taken up the challenge of COVID and have decided to move on. And with the current situation in the country, the insecurity situation, the state of insecurity has to a large extent contributed a great deal to the increase in the passenger traffic we're seeing on the domestic scene. Not much of the activities in the international scene on the part of Nigerian carriers because I can tell you it's only air peace airlines that is active on the domestic routes today in Nigeria. Most of the other players on the international route, I mean my mistake, most of the other players are largely domestic carriers for now. So like I said, it's just a resilient market and the increase in the volume of traffic on the domestic scene is a mirror of the state of insecurity in the country and a lot of people would prefer to travel by air this period in time. All right, elitras have also said there were talks of concessioning airport in the country. This is not the first time that the aviation ministry has talked about concession. What do you see happening in 2022? Would we see a complete concessioning of these airports? Well, on the issue of concession, I think it's work in progress. You would recall that there's been a lot of issues connected with the concession of airport, particularly labor issues with regards to entity fan workers who would be directly involved in the concession. The government has selected for airports, international airports for the concession, but then the labor is of the view that there are lots of issues that needs to be tidied up before we can go ahead to key properly into the concession program, federal government. Basically, workers are afraid of job losses and what would happen to the entity fan after the four airports are concessioned. As I speak to you, the unions are in discussion with the government piloted by the Ministry of Aviation with a view to addressing all the issues that have been raised so that once degree issues are addressed, we will find clear visibility on the issue. But you know the tenders have been opened, companies have indicated their interests, the bids have opened, and we are still awaiting any response from the government with regards to the next line of action. All right, also in this year on the review, there was this impasse between, you know, on the talk of the national career, there was this impasse between the NGE goal and the Euro, you know. But come 2022, what do we expect to see, in terms of Nigeria having its own national career? Well, let me just speak briefly on the NGE goal issue. Actually, you know, I'm come, Eric is on the receivership. And as it is today, Eric had a robust operation international and domestic. Because of the huge debt portfolio of Eric at home and abroad, I think the airline had concentrated on domestic operations in the time being. But I thought that the amcom having reviewed the situation thought it wise that setting up another airline out of Eric air in NGE goal will free it of any encumbrances for the purpose of accessing international market and expanding the scope of the operations. The issue arose because Eric air is indebted to almost all the federal government agencies in aviation. We are talking about about 19 billion exposure to fun. We are talking over 10 billion in ticket sales charge to NCE and there's a dollar component attached to it. So the issue is that what happens to all this money? They are public funds. They are monies that were appropriated over time by National Assembly as part of the budgets of the agencies. So what happens if NGE comes on board? Does it mean that that would be the end of the issue? And that was why some unions went road challenging praying that the AOC of NGE goal should not be released. But I can assure you they have been a lot of interventions on that matter. The National Assembly has stepped in. They've been discussions between amcom and the civil aviation authority. Of course it's a public interest issue and I think at the end of the day the best decision for the industry would be taken. To me the coming of NGE would add to the service level in the industry. And of course if NGE goal flies it would increase the in terms of yield the revenue generation for all the aviation agencies. But I thought it is important that amcom and the federal government should sit and agree on what would be done with regards to the debt of ARI so that this issue would be put behind us. Because we can afford to continue to keep airplanes that have been branded in the name of NGE goal on ground for over two years. Of course it's not good for our industry and it just shows that we meanwhile there is a lack of we have problem of debt of fleet in the industry. So I thought that even amcom should have looked at another option while this matter is still ongoing of giving those airplanes on lease to other operators to use spending when this issue be resolved. You still watching business and site and plus TV Africa will take a quick break and return with more stay with us. Before we wrap up now let's just look at the prospect of the aviation sector for 2022. These are very issues of bilateral service agreement. We know what happened in 2020 with the United Arab Emirates. How do we ensure that we get passed through all of these challenges and ensure that we have better agreement going forward in 2022? Well I don't believe that the current bilateral agreements are in any way faulty. They were signed based on the principle of reciprocity. You recall in the last 15 years a lot of Nigerian airlines were flying all over Africa. The market in the West Coast was dominated by Nigerian air carriers. Almost all the airlines were flying to Accra to Ghana going to Dakar going to Banjul going to all over West and Central Africa. I thought that the problem that we are having now is because most of our airlines have gone aground. Like I said only air peace is now going international. So you can imagine all those designations are lying follow. The issue is that while we do not have the capacity to consummate the bilateral agreements in terms of the designations and the frequencies are located there under, the foreign carriers are doing this. So to me it's a home problem. It's a national issue we must address that is to build strong airlines that are able to utilize the designations under the BASA and compete with their foreign counterparts. So to put it succinctly it is not true when this allegation that the BASAs are skewed against the interests of Nigerian air carriers. The fact of the matter is that we have not been able to develop capacity to utilize ours. We've created a situation of excess load factor on the foreign carriers. It is our people who desire this air travel service, air services. Should we stop the foreign carriers from coming on to extra frequencies when actually we are not doing our own flights. And the fact of the matter is that the truth that is not being told is that the 21 frequencies to Emirates or the 14 frequencies to other BA7 frequencies weekly to KLM and all those stuff. They are aside the traditional BASA frequencies. The bulk of those frequencies are commercial agreement frequencies which the airlines because our airlines are not doing their own flights. We approve extra flights on commercial agreements and airlines pay royalties to Nigerian government on those extra flights. So would you prefer the routes to life follow? We are not making any revenue from Nigerian airlines that are designated on those routes. The foreign airlines come and ask for extra frequencies to close the gap for the non-utilization of the designations by Nigerian airlines. And Nigeria is making money through royalties which situation is best for our country. I think we need to look deeply the current state of our industry. This thing about airlines, one man, everybody wants to own their own airline. Meanwhile globally all the big giants in the world are going into all forms of alliances, mergers, thereby becoming stronger and stronger players in the global market. So if we continue the way we are doing, unfortunately, I think we will lose out of the business. All right. We must say a very big thank you to you. We have been speaking with Eletrus Amadu, he is the president of Atsan and we have been indeed reviewing the aviation sector for 2021. Many thanks once again Eletrus. Thank you, Justin. And once again, happy new year in advance. Yeah, we wish you the same. Thank you. And that's the size of the show for this week. I am Justin Akadengir. We return again next time. Bye for now.