John Attafuah, MD, GACL
The Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) suffered a 3.3 percent decline in aircraft movements due to the suspension of Antrak Air and Starbow’s flight operations last year on technical grounds.
Compared to 37,611 movements in the previous year, the company recorded 36,354 flight movements, John Attafuah, Managing Director of GACL told shareholders at its fifth Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Thursday in Accra.
The development also took a toll on total passenger throughput last year, even though it managed to increase marginally by 1.4 percent from 2,350,118 in 2015 to 2, 381,917 in 2016.
The trivial increase was linked to international passengers because the Value Added Tax (VAT) imposed on domestic air travel also stifled its expected growth.
The foregoing notwithstanding, GACL recorded significant growth in revenues over a 10-year period from GH¢21 million in 2007 to GH¢363 million in 2016.
Its total capitalization rose over 44 times from the initial GH¢130 million to GH¢5.8 billion.
Freight experience witnessed a winding down over the previous year’s by 7.1 percent from 51,325 tonnes in 2015 to 47,677 tonnes in 2016.
The MD attributed this to the general slowdown in world trade which emanated from the drop in commodity prices and the ban on some perishable exports from Ghana to the EU market.
The profit-before-tax of GH¢153 million was 13 percent lower than the 2015 results due chiefly to increased operational costs even though total revenue for the year increased slightly to GH¢363,279 from GH¢323,298 in the previous year.
Mentioning that aeronautical revenue stood at GH¢316,737 and non-aeronautical revenue recording GH¢46,543, Mr Attafuah said it was poised to grow its non-aeronautical revenue with projects that included the airport city development project in future.
The company’s 2016 figures further point to a 13.1 percent fall in profit from GH¢177.2 million in 2015 to GH¢154.0 million.
Despite the lower profit, the company’s liquidity ratio of 6.9 in 2016 did well to cover its current contractual agreements while total capitalization also improved by far to GH¢5.8 billion in 2016 from GH¢2.2 billion in 2015, owing to the revaluation of the company’s assets.
A motion to shareholders to authorise an increase in the company’s stated capital was postponed to engender thorough deliberations on the subject by the board.
BY Samuel Boadi