Fuel Supply: Stakeholders Ask
Govt To Work With Marketers
Stakeholders in the oil and gas downstream sector have asked the Federal Government to work with major marketers to avoid a recurrence of fuel scarcity in the country.
They said the government should reach mutual agreement and understanding with the major marketers to avert the frequent recurrences of fuel scarcity in the country.
Some of the industry chiefs who spoke with Newsday recently in separate interviews in Lagos, advised the government to learn from past scarcity situations and ensure that marketers' monies were paid timely.
Officials of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) said the marketers were now ready to import petroleum products, adding that each of the major oil marketing companies had placed orders for products.
The President of the Lagos Zone of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Mr Babatunde Ogun, told Newsday that the government should ensure compliance with its agreement with the marketers.
Ogun said that now that products supply had stabilised, the government should guard against reverting to what was experienced in the last three months.
He also urged marketers to shun unnecessary delays in product importation, knowing the implications of such shortcomings.
``We expect better and more mutual understanding between the NNPC and marketers in 2010 so that it will enable investors to come into the country without fear of instability,'' he said.
The Chairman of Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Mosinmi Depot, Mr Adebisi Bada, also told Newsday that the government should make judicious use of the present fuel stability in the country to plan ahead.
Bada said that it is a bad omen for a nation that produces oil to be experiencing frequent scarcity.
He expressed joy that both the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the NNPC, and oil marketers had met on the way forward.
Newsday recalls that the prolonged scarcity was caused by the withdrawal of the marketers from importation, leaving a supply gap of about 53 per cent in the market.
Before the marketers' withdrawal, they were importing 53 per cent of the daily demand of 32 million litres of petrol while the NNPC was doing 47 per cent of the importation.
Minister Laments Poor Implementation Of Budget By MDA's
The Federal Budget is the Federal Government instrument for allocating public resources among the nations competing socio-economic needs to deliver on the solemn promises inherent in the 7 point agenda and 202020 to Nigeria people. However empowering the MDA's to achieve measurable output and outcomes with financial and other resources over which they have stewardship and holding them responsible for the expenditure and revenue which they control.
Inspite of these assurance by the federal government, last year implementation still stood at 54.26 percent. The minister of finance Dr. Mansur Muhtar stated this at the 2010 budget implementation workshop, with the theme strengthening budget implementation for enhanced project execution and service delivery recently in Abuja Muhtar disclosed that many ministries departments and agencies of the federal government failed to adequately utilized the resource placed at their disposal.
His word;, “during the course of the year, many MDA's were able to effectively implementing strategies resulting to significant improvement in capital budget implementation rates from average rate of about 20.68% as the end of March 2009 to an average rate of about 54.26% as at December 31 2009.
However, a few MDA's were able to achieve relatively high rates of capital budget implementation, while many more were unable to effectively utilize the financial resources placed at their disposal to deliver on the priorities of the government. This poor performance from some of our MDAs is inexcusable.
The minister further explain that Nigerians have patiently awaited the dividend of democracy in terms of critical infrastructure, uninterrupted power supply, qualitative education and health care, physical and food security, job creation and wealth generation it is now imperative that we accelerate our efforts to deliver on this administrations commitment under the vision 202020 to stimulate economic growth and launches into trajectory of development that will place Nigeria among the twenty leading economic by the 2020.
He, however, identified that many factors were impediment to budget implementation which include bureaucratic and documentation challenges, variable understanding of and ability to navigate the e-payment and procurement system and shortcoming in the MDAs implementation planning process.
Muktar said to address this problem his administration has taken deliberate measures to address these short coming. Key member staff of MDAs have been trained on procurement and e-payment, system. Every month, cabinet level meeting is devoted to assessing the level of implementation achieved by key large spending MDAs.
In his remarks the Director-General, Budget office of the federation, Dr. Bright Okogu, added that the theme of the workshop was carefully chosen to underscore our intent to build on the results of last year's workshop and also to focus attention on the importance of deliverable as the end product of effective budget implementation.
The 2009 capital budget, excluding the supplementary budget passed in December 2009 was implemented to about 60.6% as of Dec. 2009. He stated that this workshop also reflect government's determent undertakes its core function of development through it spending activities. “In an economy like ours where government has a significant presence, as a major driver of investment and aggregate expenditure generally, it is critical that money voted in the budget especially for capital project are actually spent on such projects.
The challenges of the Nigerian economy are enormous, ranging from the well known infrastructure gap to the security sutation in the Niger-Delta, poor quality Medicare and the challenges in our schools. Okogu said quality spending in these critical areas is essential for the actualization of Mr. President 7 point agenda, the MDGs as well as attainment of vision 20.2020. it therefore not a thing of joy to us in the Budget official and ministry of financial to see funds returned to the treasury at the end of fiscal year on the ground of the inability of MDAs to implement their budget.
