The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mele Kyari has revealed that the corporation would declare dividends in 2020 in spite of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He stated this at an interactive session with the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria, NAEC, last weekend in Abuja.
“Our vision is that NNPC will become a company of excellence and declare dividends to Nigerians and shareholders”, said the GMD.
“We are optimistic that at the end of 2020, NNPC will declare dividends to Nigerians in spite of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic”, he added.
Kyari said that accountability and transparency were key to turning NNPC into an efficient and profit-oriented enterprise, adding that, that was what informed the decision of the corporation to publish its operational and financial reports monthly.
“NNPC has never published its audited financial statement in 43 years. We came and started doing that and released the 2018 financial statement which showed that NNPC lost N803 billion”, stressed the GMD.
“We were not afraid of doing that and there were a lot of criticisms that we lost money in refinery operations and pipeline business”, he maintained.
“We went ahead and published the 2019 audited report and was able to learn and cut cost and became more efficient.
“There is no company in the country which has cut its losses within one financial year by N800 billion”, he stated.
“That means we reduced 97 per cent of our losses by cutting our cost and improving our efficiency.”
The NNPC boss stated that the Corporation was able to maintain its obligations to the Federation Account for seven months without fail in spite of the huge impact of the coronavirus on the oil and gas industry
