Olufemi Soneye, the chief corporate communications officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has maintained that the company has remained the largest contributor to the tax revenue shared every month by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).
Soneye who refuted the report of a N6.8 billion debt owed to international oil traders in a statement on Sunday, said that NNPC Ltd. and all its subsidiaries remit their taxes to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) regularly. This he said is in addition to payments of CIT to road contractors under the Road Investment Tax Credit Scheme.
According to him, “It is not correct to say that NNPC Ltd. has not remitted any money to the Federation Account since January. NNPC Ltd. and all its subsidiaries remit their taxes to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) regularly.
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“NNPC Ltd. does not owe the sum of $6.8bn to any international trader(s). In the oil trading business, transactions are carried out on credit, and so it is normal to owe at one point or the other. But NNPC Ltd., through its subsidiary, NNPC Trading, has many open trade credit lines from several traders. The company is paying its obligations of related invoices on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis.”
Commenting on the issue of quality/quantity fiscalization of imported petroleum products, he said that NNPC Ltd. has no role in that as it is not a regulator. “The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), which is the relevant regulatory agency in charge of such issues, is an independent body and does not report to the NNPC Ltd.
“That NNPC Ltd. is not averse to inquiries by the media into issues on and around its operations before dissemination to the public either through the print or electronic channels of communication as the company will, always, gladly take the opportunities to state the facts of the subject matter(s).
“This is in line with the company’s commitment to the Transparency, Accountability, and Performance Excellence (TAPE) philosophy as emplaced by the Mele Kyari-led management since stepping into the saddle in 2019,” he said.
