CBN Targets Media, Aviation Sectors With Bailout Packages |The Source

By Fola James

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has included the media and Aviation among the sectors to receive bailout to prevent job loss in the sectors.

Godwin Emefiele disclosed this on Tuesday on the apex bank’s official twitter handle. He said the intervention was necessary to mitigate the impacts of COVID 19 on the two sectors.

The CBN Governor, speaking at the end of the monthly Bankers’ Committee stated that “Such support is critical to helping the industry recover from the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

He urged commercial banks to make credit facilities available to the media and aviation industries to prevent massive job losses and frustration being currently experienced due to the pandemic.

In May, two months after the federal government announced total shutdown of the country to stop the spread of the virus, some media houses announced that they could no longer pay salaries as the stay-at-home order have reduced revenue from sales and advertising drastically.

Major media houses in the country, print and electronic have either cut salaries by over 50 per cent while others have also cut the number of their employees by at least 40 per cent.

The Nation newspapers sacked100 out of about 500 workers across Nigeria have been sacked and still counting while it also slashed salaries of staff earning over N60,000 by 50 per cent.

Ademola Osinubi, the managing director of Punch while lamenting the impacts of the COVID 19 on its operation told staff that the management must rationalize to cope with the economic realities.

This includes slashing pages of the dailies from 62 to 32, Osinubi said because “This pandemic has dealt with our business telling and severe blows. Our circulation and advertisement revenues dipped dangerously, compounding the operational and revenue challenges birthed by the migration of a majority of print newspaper readers and adverts to digital platforms.”

The case is not different in the Aviation sector where companies such Air Peace and Bristoe Helicopters Limited have sacked 70 per cent of their staff while salaries have been cut by at least 40 per cent.

Frustrated by the development some trade unions such as the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ and Aviation Workers Union, had appealed to the federal government to provide stimulus packages for the two sectors like it did in other critical sectors.

CBN had in May announced a N1.2 trillion intervention fund to support critical sectors of the economy, N1 trillion of which was to support local manufacturing sector and to boost import substitution.

Out of this, a N100 billion to support the health sector in equipping laboratories and enhancing research to produce vaccines and test kits in Nigeria, while another  N100 billion was provided as a stimulus package to support households and micro, small and medium enterprises affected by the pandemic known as Targeted Credit Facility, TCF.