The Federal Executive Council (FEC), meeting presided over by Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, has approved the sum of N17 billion for the installation of technology monitoring schemes and structures under Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF).
The device is for the automated fuel system management and censor network, which the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, said will help eliminate fuel subsidy scam as well as put to an end the conflicting figures as to the nation’s actual fuel consumption per day.
Although the project is for three years, it is expected to start yielding positive results next year when the the 2020 budget will be prepared.
Recall, Governors under the auspices of the Nigerian Governors Forum backed the deadlock of the recent Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja, rejecting Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) remittances due the public to government coffers to be shared equally among the three tiers of government.
“The narrative is that we have all struggled with this whole subsidy payment and how much is consumed in Nigeria, volumes of products moved out illegally and the whole impact on FAAC accounts, Kachikwu.
” The President has given a very serious mandate that we ought to rein in on his process. The essence of what PEF is doing is that this will enable us track refined petroleum product movement from the point of LC (letter of credit) opening from the vessels that come into Nigeria, up until the point where there are discharged into tanks in Nigeria, and from the tanks into trucks in Nigeria, monitor the trucks till they deliver the products into the storage tanks for the filling stations and there are discharged and sold.
“So, that will produce a 100 percent wholistic monitoring of these products. For the first time we will be able to tell how much petroleum products we consume in this country. Because, there has been so much going on in terms of the movement of consumption numbers from thirty something million liters a day to 70 million liters to 18 million liters a day during the difficult times.
“And the challenge the president has given me is to rain that in, let’s know what we consume in reality, let’s know where these products are going and this process will be able to track every truck. So, a typical truck will be licensed with a driver, with a transport company, so if a truck misses, you can find the transporter and the company that takes responsibility.
“So we expect this to be over a period of three years but we promise that within one year, the real effects of this will begin to show. Obviously you need time to train and to continue to improve the system. We hope that by the time we start doing the 2020 budget in 2019, we would have gotten to a point where the losses that you are seeing are being tracked and substantially impact will be made in monies that come into the federation accounts.
“It will help us keep proper data repository of consumption in this country, destruction, data on all trucks that operate, total number of products received, what is sold out of filling stations and it is going to be a collaborative system that involves NNPC, DPR and PPPRA but situate quite frankly in PEF.”
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