The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has said that it adopted cashless policy in order to boost its revenue, facilitate foreign investment, check corruption and to eliminate the encumbering logistics of cash payment and movement.
The cashless policy will take effect from May 14 and it would be adopted at the 22 airports managed by FAAN, which has deployed all the equipment and personnel for the implementation of the policy.
FAAN’s General Manager, Corporate Communications, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu, told THISDAY the gains and the reason for adopting the policy.
We want to create enabling environment for foreign investors and even for all of our travellers that make use of our airports. That was how the cashless policy came up. All over the world people hardly travel with cash. The world has gone digital. With your credit card you can carry out many transactions so FAAN is keying in to what is happening globally for coming up with this idea to go cashless,” Yakubu said.
Another major reason, according to her, is to fight corruption.
She added: “When cash is being handled by staff, corruption becomes inevitable. So this is a way of stopping corruption and also to beef up our finances as many loopholes through which FAAN loses money will be closed with the cashless policy. So whatever that is due to FAAN will get to the agency without it being shortchanged. When you do electronics transaction, everything comes to the agency. So these are some of the reasons that made us to go cashless.”
Yakubu said that the policy would also enhance ease of doing business and internally generated revenue (IGR) and overall revenue base.
“We will be able to track money that comes into our system and this makes it very easy for us. We hope our passengers will key into it once you are in our airport. It starts from May 14. But already our passengers have started complying, especially those that are learned and travel a lot. It is easy to go cashless because passengers don’t like travelling with cash.
“It also makes accountability easier for us. Our account officers face the challenge of going to bank every day to deposit cash but the cashless policy will take care of that. Accountability will be easier for us now that going to bank everyday has been eradicated. FAAN has deployed POS (point of sale) machines because we are working with banks, so we have deployed these machines to most of our 22 airports, if not all of them,” she added.
THISDAY
