By CK Khanal

Kathmandu, Apr. 24: The global aviation industry is passing through a very difficult situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic as most of the countries have banned international flights in fear of virus breakout.
Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) which was already facing problems of cash flow and mismanagement has now been prone to more acute problems from the pandemic as its planes have remained grounded for a month and it is still uncertain when regular flights will resume.
In the meantime, the government has appointed former secretary Sushil Ghimire to the post of executive chairman of Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) which was turned vacant some three months ago after the resignation of then executive chairman Madan Kharel.
NAC, the national flag carrier of the country, has 100 per cent government stake; therefore, it will be the responsibility of the government to save it from this crisis.
From the day one of his appointment, Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Bhattarai is saying that his one major priority is to reform the crisis-ridden national flag carrier.
Minister Bhattarai has, now, placed former secretary Ghimire in the driving seat of the already indebted corporation which is now facing the wind of the global crisis.
Though Ghimire has the experience of heading the board of directors of NAC when he was secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, the current global crisis will pose more challenges to him to steer the corporation out of the problem.
One former managing director of the NAC, on condition of anonymity, said that not only the government of Nepal, all governments across the world should invest to revive their respective national flag carriers from the current pandemic.
He said that the aviation sector had been the service sector having very low profit margin for the last 15 years after the entry of low cost carriers (LCC). Therefore, support of the government is essential to the national flag carrier to take off from the current crisis.
“The current problem of the NAC is financial. The NAC is facing the problem of cash flow in the last couple of years and this problem will be more acute from the current crisis when almost all planes are grounded for a month,” he said.
He said that the government should address the financial problem of NAC through the budget of the next fiscal year. The government should support paying interest of its loan for some time.
He stressed on promoting tourism in those countries which were less affected by coronavirus including China in the aftermath of virus pandemic to revive its tourism and also the aviation sector.
According to him, another problem the NAC faced was lack of ownership and negligence on part of the government.
“As the public corporation, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation is the owner of the corporation, but I could not find such feeling in officials of the Ministry during my tenure,” he said.
Officials at the Ministry only treat corporations on the basis of their profit and loss, but not as per their importance and contribution to the country, which is wrong, he said.
As a former secretary at the Ministry, Ghimire will have some plus points to convince the Ministry about its role for the betterment of the national flag carrier, he said.
Former director of NAC Ram Hari Sharma said that funding was the main problem that the NAC was facing for long.
He said that the government should convert at least 50 per cent of its debt as equity for the improvement of financial condition of the corporation.
The corporation has loan of more than Rs 35 billion to pay and has been unable to pay its installments on time.
Sharma said that problem of internal management was not big and could be solved easily if the management was recruited from outside.
Newly appointed executive chairman of NAC Ghimire said that his immediate priority in the corporation would be to save the NAC from the current crisis and then to make and implement plans for its reforms in the long run.
He said that purchasing more small and large aircrafts and management reforms would be his future plan for the improvement of NAC.
“For the effective and regular service, the NAC lacks aircraft. Therefore we have to add more aircraft for both domestic and international flights,” he said.
“Currently, we are focusing on rescue and cargo flights and will focus on foreign marketing in the aftermath of this pandemic analyzing the global trend of tourism,” he added.