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Business Courage
Continued from pg A3 with it today. The landed cost is N150 but it was being subsidized at N150 because we cannot effectively move the products around the country because of the damage done to our facilities. “The reason for staying action is because if we remove the Subsidy on kerosene suddenly, obviously the price of kerosene will escalate. It will cause a major problem for the economy and the government. There will be untold hardship for the Nigerian masses. “The GMD at that time wrote two memos to the Finance Minister for clarification despite a presidential directive but no clarification came, hence the subsidy remained. The issue of deduction at source happened because the product landed at N150 and was sold at N50. “There is a N100 gap which must be covered and it is not budgeted for. The NNPC was unable to retrieve the amount. In this case, based on the first line charge in the Appropriation Act, it means that NNPC would have gone under long time ago under the weight of the Subsidy and it would have affected the economy of other countries in West Africa. “The business of kerosene had become a very distracting and messy business in terms of all what is happening and what is being said in the polity. It will be very simple for the NNPC and the Ministry of petroleum to withdraw from the issue of kerosene but there is no marketer that wants to go into the business. “They will come in but it will take time before they take over the distribution but before then the price of kerosene will go up astronomically and we all know that. We have to establish a balance so that the masses of this country do not suffer,” Alison-Madueke said. However, as the matter got to its head last Thursday, with boththe NNPC/Petroleum Ministry and the CBN maintaining divergent viewpoints, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Coordinating Minister and Minister of Finance had to admit before the Senate Committee on Finance investigating the alleged missing fund that indeed, a forensic expert may have to be called in to unravel the mystery. Okonjo-Iweala said going by the controversy that had surrounded the remittance of the subsidy fund, there was the need for external auditors to carry out a forensic auditing of NNPC account on the issue. She said the services of forensic experts were needed to verify data submitted by NNPC which the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, PPPRA had certified to ascertain whether the claim was true or not as the PPPRA and the ministry of finance alone cannot establish the veracity of the claim. “Our judgment is that a proper examination of these documents requires technical expertise beyond the capacity of the reconciliation team and, therefore, we believe we should have an independent forensic audit, managed independently of these submissions. “We have decided to let the forensic auditors examine the accounts (of the NNPC) and let Nigerians fully know what is going on. “We understand that this kind of forensic audit requires experts who have some knowledge of the petroleum industry because it is very specialized. What the NNPC submitted was a mountain of documents on shipping, loading, when ships arrived and all that. It requires specialized forensic auditors to work on it,” the minister had told the senate committee members. Okonjo-Iweala however, admitted that the nation’s oil account was complex but assured that there was a proper process for accountability. “There is a proper process going in this country and all those writing should know that there is due process in this country. Reconciliation has been going on in the last two years. “The oil account is a very complex business. For example, oil is lifted to pay back what is called “carry arrangement “ in which oil is supplied for loans taken by NNPC in the past and is to be paid back in crude oil to those creditors who gave NNPC those loans. So when you look at it, someone can say there is a missing x number of barrels which should have been accounted for. But it is used in paying for debt owed by the NNPC. “That is why we are asking for forensic audit so that we can have all these things clearly verified. You can’t just look at the balance of payment numbers- you will not get it right. Those are some of the reasons why we said it is a complex issue. Let us get the experts into this and let them give account to Nigerians”. The minister added that “the issue of unremitted funds by NNPC is not new and all attempt to make it look as if the work that should be done in this country to reconcile accounts by the Ministry of Finance is not true. “The finances of the country that come into the budget have been managed very transparently to the point that the budget of the country is so detailed that people can tell how much is spent in the State House to buy forks and knives and be able to criticize. “Even if they don’t like it, they have the information and we should be proud of that as a country. There is no country from my experience of over 60 countries that have the details released by the budget office of this country. “The issue is that where is that money, how is it being accounted for and we have led the process. We asked both the NNPC and the PPPRA to produce their documents and they had produced certified copies for the $10.8bn and we have asked for an independent audit. “A lot of accusations are being made in this country and the BC be satisfied is to have an independent audit,” she emonly way to
Monday, February 17, 2014
National Mirror www.nationalmirroronline.net
News
A tank farm
Seaport concessionaires raise fresh fears over tank farms By Francis Ezem
S
ea Port Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria STOAN, umbrella body for all seaport concessionaires operating in Nigeria has added its voice to repeated calls on the Federal Government to ease the traffic congestion in Apapa, which also houses two biggest seaports in the country. Port services users, Apapa residents and other critical stakeholders have over the years criticised the Federal Government for allowing tank farms to be sited within the densely populated and busy area, which has led to several fire explosions leading to loss of lives and property. Chairman of the association, Vicky Hastruup, who spoke with news men in Lagos, observed that with the two biggest and busiest seaports in Nigeria, Lagos Ports Complex and Tin Can Island Port Complex, Apapa is already too busy and congested as a modern business district. According to her, locating tank farms in the area has helped to worsen the situation, with the attendant blockage of the various port access roads, which impacts negatively on port operations, as it also hinders efficiency She said: “Apart from these two major seaports, there are several other businesses located in Apapa and so there are some kinds of businesses that are not supposed to be here for instance the tank farms”. She also regretted that the presence of the tank farms, which also attract hoards of trucks queuing to lift products, has put so much pressure on all the port access roads, which also negatively affect the ability of cargoes to move in
and out of the seaports. “The state of the access roads is one of the biggest challenges faced by the terminal operators. A lot of businesses are in Apapa that are not supposed to be here for instance the tank farms. They are rather too close to the seaports”, she also said. She therefore appealed to the relevant authorities to take urgent action towards addressing the problem in order to relieve the burden on the access roads to the seaports and therefore truly make the ports transshipment centres. Hastruup, who also assessed the states of the seaports about eight years after concession, noted that there has been a lot of improvement in the nation’s port systems both in terms of efficiency, volume of cargo and even turn time of vessels that call at the nation’s seaports. “Eight years ago we saw what it was, how difficult it was to do business in the Nigerian port system. We were even wondering how the Nigerian Ports Authority was releasing cargo without equipment”, she said. She also disclosed that between 2006 and now when the terminal operators took over the handling of cargo at the ports, cargo throughput for all the nation’s eight seaports has grown by over 250 per cent, which she said is remarkable. Hastruup, who doubles as Executive Vice chairman/ CEO of ENL Consortium, the concessionaire in charge of terminals C and D of the Lagos LPC, also said that last year alone, the volume of cargo into the seaports grew by over 13 percent, which she also said was first of its kind in the history of seaports in the country. “The growth in the volume of cargo over the years is a demonstration of the level of efficiency that has returned to the ports because if service delivery at the ports is not high, I know the importers would have ran to ports of neighbouring West African countries”, she
insisted. She also attributed the increase in cargo volumes to the fact that the terminal operators have taken painstaking efforts to develop their terminals, in addition to acquiring state-of -the art plants and equipment, which has boosted efficient service delivery. “We may not be where we want to be for now in terms of efficiency, but tremendous improvements have been made considering where we are coming from”, she said. On the provision of common user facilities such as light and public water, by NPA as contained in the concession agreement, she noted that most of the terminals run more than 90 per cent on generator due to the failure of public power supply. She however exonerated NPA, saying the authority also depends on public power supply, but however regretted that it has not done well in terms of fixing the access roads, which partly contribute to the delay in cargo delivery.
EU sponsors wasteto-wealth project on cassava peels in Nigeria
P
rof. Lateef Sanni of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), has said that the European Union
Sonnenberg