The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has disclosed that cargo flight operations between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are set to resume after years of inactivity.
Keyamo announced this on a post on his official X handle yesterday after a meeting with the Minister of Transport and Logistics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Saleh Al-Jasser, on the sidelines of the Future Aviation Forum going on in Riyadh.
He commended his counterpart for his interest in developing the cargo operations between the two countries, adding that Nigeria has about seven dedicated cargo airports that could service the operations and allayed the fears that funds on the cargo business could be trapped in Nigeria.
He stated that Nigeria has improved in terms of Forex liquidity due to the policy put in place by the current administration under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He commended the KSA for the tremendous development she had attained in civil aviation stating that Nigeria would like to benefit from the vision in terms of airport design and the floating of a leasing company.
On the problems encountered during the current Hajj exercise, he promised to take the necessary action to forestall reoccurrence by ensuring that the concerned Government agency responsible takes the necessary action.
The Minister of Transport and Logistics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia dwelled on how to rejig the comatose cargo flight operations between Nigeria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Jasser stated there was high volume of cargo flights between Nigeria and his country in the past, but the traffic was affected due to the inability of freighters from the KSA to repatriate their funds.
He stated that with the current leadership in Nigeria, he had the believe that the narration was going to change adding that Saudi Arabia made a total of fifteen cargo flights to China which Nigeria could leverage to freight goods to and from China.
Speaking further, he averred that the tremendous growth in Aviation in Saudi Arabia was in line with the vision of the leadership of his country which was a testament and an inspiration that “we all can change” and promised to share his country’s experience with Nigeria.
Other area of discussion was the airlift of pilgrims from Nigeria to the Holy Land with the Saudi Arabian Minister affirming tremendous improvements from the part of Nigeria, but that there were issues concerning late departure attributed to delay in payment of Basic Travel Allowance (BTA) to the pilgrims and access to aviation fuel.
Keyamo alos during a meeting with Minister of Transport of the State of Qatar Jassim Saif Ahmed Al-Sulaiti urged him to ensure that Qatar Airways patronises local catering services on the airline’s return trip to Doha from Nigeria. This he stated would contribute to the local economy in line with the signed Bilateral Air Service Agreement.
The Minister of Transport Qatar indicated interest in partnering with Nigeria in ensuring that both countries benefit from the subsisting Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) between them. He underscored the importance of Nigeria in Africa, as a country with tremendous potentials and that Qatar would like to strengthen its air connectivity with Nigeria by offering some level of assistance.
