Business
High Rent Leaves Many Shops Vacant At PH Airport
At least, 80 percent of shops and offices at the arrival terminal building of the Port Harcourt International Airport Omagwa are still lying vacant due to high rental cost.
The Tide’s findings have shown that some business operators that wanted to rent shops and offices at the terminal building were discouraged because of the high cost of rent.
Some of the business operators told The Tide that the high cost of rent at the Port Harcourt Airport had scared many of them away from getting a shop at the airport.
An intending shop owner at the airport, Mr Friday Nwanze, said he intended to rent one of the shops at the terminal building to use for snacks bar and books, but that he was discouraged by the price tag.
“How will the airport management insist on N3 million per annum as rent inside the terminal building? How much am I going to sell and make as profit?
“I don’t know why they are making things very difficult here, but if you go to Lagos Airport, there are shops and businesses everywhere, because they don’t charge them that much.
“Look at empty shops everywhere in the terminal. People are discouraged because of high rental charges, and I don’t know whether they want to kill this airport indirectly”, he said.
Also reacting to alleged high rental charges, Mrs Nkiruka Obilor who operates a POS service, recharge cards, and other personal effects, lamented the inability of FAAN to give them shops to run business.
“The charge is very expensive, and that is indirect way to discourage us from renting. How would I be able to pay three million naira in a year?
“If they reduce the rental charges, many of us can rent. I don’t know why this present airport management has taken everything so high, and this is killing business in this airport”, she said.
Meanwhile, the acting Head of Corporate Affairs Department at the Airport, Mr Kunle Akinbode, in an earlier interview, had said that the airport had relaxed on issues of revenue before now.
He said that the Covid-19 pandemic had left some negatives in the airport’s income generation, adding that the airport management is poised to generate revenue to meet up its demands.
By: Corlins Walter