The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said N2.4 trillion was spent on Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) certified subsidies between 2012 and 2015.
The NNPC made this known in its clarification on the fresh allegation of revenue under-remittance by the Senate.
Recall that the Senate had last Wednesday at plenary, faulted the NNPC over alleged under-remittance of N3.8 trillion revenue from domestic crude oil sales to the federation account between January and December 2015.
The upper chamber had urged the corporation to desist from further deduction at source, as the practice contravened Section 162(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
In a statement yesterday, the NNPC said the allegation was around issues that had been resolved by a forensic audit carried out by the ministry of finance in 2015 which showed a net indebtedness in favour of the corporation.
“These are the facts regarding the fresh allegation by the Senate that NNPC under-remitted revenues from domestic crude oil to the tune of N3.8trillion in 2015.
“The amount allegedly under-remitted is the applicable subsidy and unrealised revenue from petroleum products sales and other operational costs for the period.”
The NNPC said breakdown of the various components of the alleged under-remitted amount which it said were presented as claims and were duly validated by forensic auditors and the Auditor-General of the Federation were as follows:
PPPRA Certified Subsidy (2012-Nov 2015), N2.44 trillion (N2,439,859,459,982.00); Validated & Approved NNPC Claims (2004-2009), N797.7 billion (N797,710,684,354.00); crude oil and products losses (2012-Nov 2015), N245.2 billion (N245,184,597,565.65); pipeline maintenance cost (2012-Nov 2015) N409.9 billion (409,985,574,539.86); totaling N3.89 trillion in operational expenses (N3,892,740,316,442.12)
According to the corporation, the root cause of the misunderstanding leading to the allegation is the non-incorporation of the above claims into the Accountant-General of the Federation’s report even though they had been validated by forensic auditors and the Auditor-General of the Federation.
It also said that subsidies are operational costs as set out in the NNPC Act Section 7(d) which does not contradict the 1999 Constitution Section 80 (1) and Section 162 (1).
“NNPC welcomes the proposal by the Senate to approve a certain percentage of revenues for it as cost of collection as is the case with the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) in readiness for full deregulation,” it said.
