Lagos — Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has threatened to ground operations of foreign airlines indebted to it from January 1, 2010; unless they pay the charges they owe the agency.

NAMA's Chairman, Board of Governing Council, Alhaji Abubakar Baraje, who disclosed this in Lagos, yesterday, at the executive management retreat organised by Felicite Financials/Tax Consults and Associates Limited, said the suspension would be part of the measures the agency would adopt to recover the debts.

Baraje said NAMA had already secured the services of a consultant that would design reliable ways to recover the debts and also plan how to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) base.

Besides the debts, domestic operators also owe the Agency huge debts, but NAMA management said it would not immediately force indigenous carriers to pay their debts because of their present financial distress.

One of the major operators is said to owe NAMA about N800 million.Baraje said, "I am the one who said a few months ago after a management meeting, that the Board will dialogue with our local airline operators to recover our debts, but with international airlines, the Board will have no sympathy.

That is one of the reasons why we are employing a consultant. It is not made only for IGR, but also for debt recovery. And we believe that by the fourth quarter of next year, we would be able to give you some figures and say, this is what they owe us and this is what we have been able to recover."

He said the agency did not want to over stress the issue of debts recovery, "because we want to take those debtors by surprise.

We do not intend to ground the aircraft of our local airline operators because they are contributing a lot to the economy. But with international airlines, as from January 1, we will begin to ground their aircraft," he said.

He said with completion of the Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria (TRACON) project, the Agency would be able to monitor the airspace properly, adding that NAMA would soon begin to collect charges from airlines that over fly Nigeria's airspace.