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PHILIPPINE Airlines, the country’s flag carrier
will prepay part of its outstanding debt this year, its chief
operating officer said.
”This year we will prepay
$120 million. It has been programmed,” Jaime J. Bautista, PAL
president told reporters.
PAL had paid $1 billion out of
its $2.2-billion obligations to the US Export Import Bank and a
group of European export credit agencies and local lenders.
By end of this year,
PAL’s remaining obligations would fall to $880 million, Bautista
said.
The airline in 1999 filed
for a receivership, after defaulting on its $2.2 billion worth of
debt.
PAL had proposed an early
exit from its rehabilitation, citing its progress in settling its
debts.
Bautista said that profits for
fiscal year April 2006 to March 2007 are expected to be flat owing
to higher fuel costs.
“Expected profitability
is more or less same as last [fiscal] year,” he said.
PAL posted a profit of
$28.7 million in 2005 to 2006.
Higher fuel costs are expected to
cap revenue growth at 5 percent to 6 percent.
PAL’s fuel costs account
for about 35 percent of the airline’s operating expenses.
Bautista added that PAL
during the Holy week posted an average of 130 to 140 flights for
both the domestic and international operations. This was higher than
the off season rate of 110 flights daily.
He said the bulk of their
volume was for domestic flights, while 60 were for the international
flights.
 --Darwin
G. Amojelar
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