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Gurgaon, 24th February, 2015: SpiceJet today announced that it has
cleared its major outstanding dues related to Income Tax (TDS) payments. It had earlier
this month also cleared all Service Tax dues and employee salaries. The airline
believes that the clearance of these dues is a key step in the airline’s revival and
resurgence plan.
“Paying our statutory dues that we had fallen behind on as a result of a very difficult
couple of years, was an extremely high priority for us”, said Kiran Koteshwar,
Acting CFO, SpiceJet.
“This is the first major step in our settling our payables to various creditors, which
we will do as per mutual discussions and payment plans that are being put together,”
he added. “We have also paid all salaries to our staff, and have
started making meaningful payments to our other business partners,” he
concluded.
Clearance of major tax outstandings comes a day after the airline shares officially
changed hands, resulting in co-founder Ajay Singh formally assuming the role of
majority shareholder and promoter. SpiceJet stock also reached 80-week high today.
“Our resurgence is very much on track,” said Sanjiv Kapoor, Chief Operating
Officer of SpiceJet. “Load factors are in the mid-80s, on-time performance
has bounced back nicely and is now regularly hitting 90%, and we are flying over 200
flights a day, to increase to 280 daily flights in April”, he added.
“Consumer confidence is back, staff morale is high, creditors who have been very patient
with us are finally seeing the fruits of their patience”, he added.
“No airline in India has come back so positively in such little time from the kind of
situation we faced in December when legacy liabilities combined with a delay to
re-capitalization put us in a very difficult position. It is a credit to our staff and
our creditors and partners including lessors, to AAI and private airports, to the
patience and loyalty of our customers, as well as to the foresight of the Government
and the Ministry of Civil Aviation that helped us get some breathing space during that
period, that we are now resurgent again. It is a fantastic outcome, and on behalf of
SpiceJet I want to thank all those who supported us during this period,” Kapoor
concluded.
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