The Supervising Minister of Aviation, Dr Samuel Ortom, has said that the ministry plans to appeal to the federal government for special intervention fund to clear some outstanding debts.
Ortom made the disclosure yesterday while presenting the summary of the 2013 appropriation to the Senate Committee on Aviation during its oversight visit to the ministry in Abuja.
He said the ministry had incurred some outstanding debts in its three phases of contracts awarded so far in the past years.
Ortom said in order to come up with strategy of debts repayment, the Aviation and Finance Ministry were setting up an inter-ministerial committee to review the budget to offset debts.
The supervising minister said N42. 2 billion was appropriated to the aviation ministry in 2013, adding that only N25.7 billion was actually released to the ministry, representing about 61per cent.
He added that a statement of projects performance captured from 2011 to May 2014 showed that the ministry awarded contracts in phase one of the aviation roadmap worth N10.1 billion.
The contracts awarded under phase two were worth N57.7 and N63.1 billion contratcs were awarded under phase three, he said.
The supervising minister said that the total contracts awarded so far amounted to N217.5 billion and over N100 billion was still outstanding.
“We will see where we can at least for now suspend some of the projects that are yet to take off so that we can put the figures down and work toward finishing the ongoing projects.
“We are working on establishing airports development levy with international best practice and with the support of the Senate and House of Representatives.
“We are also working to see where we can have special intervention funds to be able to clear some of the outstanding debts”, he added. (NAN)
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