The House of Representatives Committee on Finance has walked out the Pipeline Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) for failing to give appropriate figures on its daily output of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) and other petroleum products in the country.
Chairman of the Committee, James Faleke and other members unanimously agreed at the ongoing interactive session on the 2020-2024 Medium expenditure framework, that there are discrepancies in the records presented vis-a-vis revenues due to the government was incoherent.
Faleke, also asked the agency to reappear on Thursday to give further clarification on the discrepancies noticed in their documents as the PPPRA Assistant General Manager (AGM), Corporate Services, Kimshi Apollo could not give clear answers to some of the questions asked by the lawmakers.
Trouble started when the Chairman of the Finance Committee pointed that the documents submitted by the agency showed that the daily output of PMS and other products has been the same from 2018 to 2019.
The Chairman of the Committee, also noted that the agency provided conflicting records on the daily discharge and consumption of petroleum products in the country.
According to him, “the records presented have contradictions that cannot be ignored”.
“Tell us that the documents are not correct so that we can move forward. So, the data you gave us yesterday which says 52 million per day was wrong, so your Naira figure too will be wrong.
In his response, the PPPRA Assistant General Manager Corporate Services, Mr Kimshi Apollo, said, they brought the constant figure of 48 million litres based on what transpired earlier Monday regarding the average daily consumption by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
In his ruling, the Committee chairman directed PPPRA to produce the records of all the daily output of petroleum products as well as the revenue remittances to the federal government unfailingly.
It also demanded from the Financial Reporting Council, the Accountant General Office as well as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to scrutinize the records and reappear on Thursday.
RN