BOST Maiden AGM: company ensures more petroleum products for consumers, pays taxes despite zero dividend-MD

Managing Director for Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company Limited, Mr Edwin Provencal says the inflows of the new income will afford the company the efficiency to increase the volumes of fuel it brings to the country.

Mr Provencal said that until there was a deliberate strategy to stock the tanks in the company, the country could not speak of a strategic reserve at the moment.

Speaking to the media at BOST's maiden annual general meeting at the Movenpick Hotel in Accra, the Managing Director said that the country needed a proper policy for the strategic reserves, thanking the Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh for showing his commitment to achieving it.

“I am happy that today the Minister of Energy has supported the fact that the government is now willing to help BOST to procure strategic reserves and also keep the petroleum security that the nation demands”, he stated.

Commenting on the means to ensure the strategic reserves, Mr Edwin Provencal mentioned that the policy decision had to come from the Energy Minister even though there is a mention of restoring the strategic reserve levy which was scrapped in 2006.

He, thus, added that there should be other innovative means to ensure that the nation’s petroleum security was guaranteed.

Addressing the issue of fuel volatility on both the local and international markets, Mr Provencal said the situation did not escalate due to the efficiency of BOST to bring in volumes of fuel in spite of the high demand on a daily basis and also lack of financial muscle to bring in the required volumes as the consumers needed.

“Had it not been the fact that BOST was very efficient today, the situation of volatility on the local and international markets would have been worst and the consumer would have suffered the more. We are bringing in volumes of fuel but don’t forget that demand keeps going up every day and we don’t also have the latitude in terms of financial muscle to bring in the required volumes as they need”, he responded.

He again mentioned that “…we have made a very keen contribution to ensuring that there is petrol and gasoline (petroleum products) available in the market. We don’t dispute the fact that our role can be enhanced and the Minister has said that the government is now willing to ensure that through innovative ways, that strategic drill will be enhanced. I have no doubt that it would happen, hopefully before the end of the year”.

Touching on some of the achievements of BOST under his leadership, the Managing Director disclosed that almost 98 per cent of the company’s liability has been cleared through some interventions of the Akufo-Addo government.

He added that regardless of the liability, many banks still want to do a lot of business with the company; describing the company’s liability as a “book liability”.

“We owe the shareholder and we are heavily undercapitalised and the shareholder is working towards recapitalising BOST and I am sure both liabilities will eventually be converted to equity”, he stated.

Meanwhile, BOST MD said the company could not declare dividends due to the fact that the company in the past had made losses which had put their return earnings into a negative.

“Until we clear all the outstanding and cross all the zero mark, hopefully, within the next three to four years, we should be declaring dividends to them but we have contributed a lot in terms of taxes to the kitty and the gains that are coming, we are also going to use a lot of them to expand infrastructure, make BOST really efficient so that they play their key role that the nation has put them”, he assured.

He was however optimistic that BOST would perform well this year as their numbers were way above the revenues they earned last year and coupled with the fact that they have about four months to end the year.

“We should expect a good performance this year. As we speak, our numbers are way above the revenues we earned last year and we have about four months to go, so we think that by the end of the year, we should be better than what we did in terms of revenues”, he was hopeful.