Despite the strong believe and insinuation in certain quarters that Arik Air is worse under the management team of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), an aviation consultant and Managing Director, Aerokeys Nigeria Limited, Hon. Kudla Milnda Satumari, said that it was too early to begin to appraise the performance of AMCON.
Satumari further explained that interaction with employees of the company reveals that salaries are now paid as at when due but added that managing a company goes beyond payment of salaries.
“In the long run we would be able to properly evaluate performance of AMCON because the aim of every business is to have return on investment. So, if I base my assessment on salary payment alone then I am not been fair to all the stakeholders in the issue.
Employees are important but they are just one segment of the stakeholders, the investors and former management team is there.”
He, however, blamed the challenges in the aviation industry on policy inconsistency in foreign exchange, saying, “There is nowhere in the world where annual profit margin of airline operators is above 25 per cent.
Therefore, the policy inconsistency in forex forced many airline operators in Nigeria to close shop in certain local and international routes, as well as reduce their frequencies.”
It would be recalled that AMCON had maintained that Arik Air owed it N263.7 billion, but the former management of the airline had argued that its total debt exposure, “including that of international creditors and local debts amounted to N160 billion, which represents a 16.4 percent of its value put at $3.2 billion by Deloitte UK in 2013."
