Abuja- Dr Anthony Anuforom, the Director-General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), said the commercialisation of the agency’s operations would increase revenue from non-aeronautical sources and reduce dependence on government funding.
Anuforom told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja that the target of the agency was to reduce its over-dependence on revenue from aeronautical sources which currently accounted for about 90 per cent of its revenue.
H said that the agency would explore the abundant opportunities in the oil and gas sector to generate more revenue.
“Our target is to reduce, the preponderance of revenue from aeronautical sources.
“Presently, revenue from aeronautical services accounts for probably somewhere around 90 per cent of our revenue and yet there are opportunities in other areas like the oil and gas we have mentioned.
“So eventually therefore, the facilities we have here will drive that process because we have high competing capacity, because we have automated systems, we are in a position to generate products that have commercial value.
“In the next two three years, our target is to increase other sources of revenue – that is non-aeronautical sources – to account for more than 50 per cent.“
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Anuforom said though the focus of the agency had been on aviation, NIMET would take advantage of opportunities beyond the sector.
He said that NIMET had developed the capacity to offer services in the oil and gas as well as the maritime sectors.
The NIMET boss said the agency was working closely with the UK Met Office.
According to him, the UK office has been commercialised and has been providing meteorological services in the oil and gas sector for decades.
He explained that NIMET and the UK Met Office had formed a working and technical partnership that would see them explore the opportunities in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Anuforom said the two agencies would mount joint exhibition at the coming 2015 Oil and Gas Summit in Abuja to showcase NIMET’s readiness to offer commercial services in the sector.
“The new ISO Certification we are pursuing now is ISO-17025 and that will enable us to show the world that our instrument calibration laboratory is world class and meets international standard.
“The machines are already there. In fact we used those machines to calibrate meteorological instruments for Ghana Met Agency late last year.
“But we want to go beyond West Africa; we want to go beyond even the African continent.
“To do that, we need to have internationally recognised accreditation and that is ISO-17025; that is where we are going.“