Precision Air losses deepens

ONLINE REPORTER

Precision Air

Precision Air has reported an increase in pre-tax loss blaming weak shilling resulted to foreign exchange loss by almost five times.

The airline, leading domestic carrier, despite reducing operational costs by slightly over half, the pre-profit loss increased to 91.6bn/-at the end of March 2016 from 83.8bn/- at March 2015.

Precision Air Chief Executive Officer, Ms Sauda Rajab said, these resulted from an extremely tough aviation context in which airlines are confronted by unpredictable currency fluctuations, volatile fuel prices and insecurity.

She said among reasons behind the loss include weak shilling against major currencies, which resulted to the increased forex loss of 28.7bn/- and financial cost by 6.6bn/- compared to last year.

However, the airline has successfully managed to reduce operational cost from 53bn/- to 25bn/- in the just ended 2015/2016 company’s financial year.

The shilling had depreciated by almost 22 per cent from 1796/96 at the end of March 2015 to 2,189/97 of March 2016. The airline share on Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange remains stagnated at 475/- since the beginning of this year.

The listing price was 500/-.