Rather than going through the obvious difficult process of repatriating its funds out of Nigeria, South African Airways (SAA) has just announced that from Wednesday, August 10, 2022, it will start adjusting its tickets from Naira to Dollar with the aim of making it seamless for its funds to be repatriated to her home country rather than get it trapped in Nigeria.
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The development is coming while the $450 million funds belonging to the foreign carriers operating into Nigeria have been trapped in the country.
In. a statement issued and addressed to its trade partners Tuesday evening, the Southern African carrier declared that from Wednesday, August 10, 2022, passengers can only issue Sold Inside Ticketed Inside (SITI), that is trips emanating from Lagos-Johannesburg-Lagos tickets in Naira.
In other words, all tickets issued in Nigeria will be paid for in Naira in line with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy that tickets issued in the country should be paid for in Naira.
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The airline however added that all other tickets such as Sold Outside Ticket Inside (SOTI) and Sold Outside Ticketed Outside (SOTO), that is, tickets issued outside would be paid for in dollars.
Under the latest arrangements, tickets sold outside and ticketed outside the country would be issued in dollars.
In the notice issued to its trade partners, the airline had stated: “Please be informed that effective from Wednesday 10th August 2022, you can ONLY issue SITI (i.e. LOS-JNB-LOS) tickets in Naira. ALL other ticket, i.e., SOTI, SOTO have to be issued in USD.
“Note only tickets with travel originating from Nigeria can be issued in Naira”.
The latest announcement by South African Airways may have been triggered by the inability of the over 27 foreign carriers operating into Nigeria to repatriate their accumulated $450 million funds trapped in the CBN without any hope of getting the funds back to their home countries.
Many of the foreign carriers out of frustration had introduced other tough policies that will help cushion the impacts of the trapped funds on their operations.
Such policies which include a high increase in fares on the different international routes and the suspension of the sale of cheaper fares have subjected Nigerian travellers to serious hardships with the fares on the Nigerian route becoming the most expensive in the subregion.
