Following stringent measures put in place in the management of fuel importation to check corruption in the payment of fuel subsidy claims, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has said that the federal government has between January and October 2012, saved a whopping N671 billion.
Disclosing this in the agency’s recent report made available to LEADERSHIP yesterday, the Executive Secretary of PPPRA, Mr. Reginald Stanley, said that the figure represents 49.7 per cent when compared to subsidy payment made within the same period in 2011 which stood at N1.3 trillion.
While explaining that the figure was likely to further rise by the end of the year, Reginald attributed the savings to stringent and proactive reform initiatives being put in place in the management of fuel importation.
“We have been able to shrink the size of briefcase marketers from 128 to only 38. In other words, we successfully cleaned out 90 companies, while setting stringent regulatory conditions which would make it difficult for marketers to short-change the system. Our efforts have not stopped here, as we are more than determined to refer any matter to the EFCC, should we notice any infraction,” he said.?
According to him, the federal government has done well in the area of halting fuel subsidy scams in the country, noting that efforts aimed at improving transparency and accountability were beginning to yield positive results.
A breakdown of the payment data in the course of the year shows that out of the N679 billion subsidy payment made between January and October, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) got N337.7billion, while other marketers received a combined figure of N342 billion as against a combined N1.351 trillion paid in within the period in 2011.
He also used the opportunity to debunk the news making the rounds about the jumbo salaries and allowances of PPPRA staff, describing it as a gross mis-representation of the true facts.
He said the sum of N5.7billion, when broken down into sub-heads, actually accounted for staff salaries and allowances, National Contributory Pension, Pension Payments, and National Health Insurance Scheme among others which is consistent with what obtains in other sister organisations, and added that the PPPRA did? not operate a peculiar salary structure.