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Oil marketing companies (OMCs) that have been suspended by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) following under-declaration of returns on fuel they loaded in January and February also face the risk of losing their licences, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NPA, Mr Alhassan S. Tampuli, has said.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic last Sunday in an exclusive interview, he said the review conducted on the operations of OMCs in the first two months of the year showed that a number of them were guilty in under-declaring or not declaring at all petroleum products loaded on the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA’s) volume reconciliation forms submitted to the NPA.

Going by GH¢4.54 per litre of unpaid margins and petroleum products that were not declared by six of the seven suspended companies, shows that about 19,214,850 litres of products valued at GH¢87.24 million were not made known and so did not attract the required taxes and levies.

“Beyond the suspension, we are going to get them to pay all the taxes, pay all the levies and margins and then they will pay the penalties involved in the tax evasion.

“We will take them through the process of revocation of licence. We might revoke their licences if they don’t have any reasonable explanations for all that have taken place,” he stated.

Mr Tampuli said the authority was awaiting the lapsing of the deadline given to the suspended OMCs to reconcile their figures with written explanations, after which it would take steps to retrieve all the money owed the state and possibly start the processes to revoke the licences of the OMCs that deserved it.

Taxes and licence revocation

Before going to press yesterday, Mr Tampuli indicated that the NPA was set to take action to ensure that the OMCs were first made to pay up all taxes, margins and levies they had evaded, as well as all penalties that went with the failure to honour those payments.

“When you use trucks which have NPA trackers, there is a penalty for that. When you load products without getting the fuel marking in it, there is a penalty for that. If you declare falsely, that one too there is a penalty for it and for each one of them, they are going to pay the penalties, so it is quite a lot,” Mr Tampuli explained.

The penalties were only those due the NPA, he said, and added that the defaulting companies would also be made to pay up all outstanding margins, as well as all statutory taxes they were supposed to be paid to the GRA.

“So it’s quite a lot and whatever amount they have made, we will make sure that we recover every single cedi from them. In addition and more importantly, the naming and shaming as you will be doing in the papers, I think, is enough corporate damage for them,” the NPA’s CEO stated.

More companies

The OMCs were given varying dates to respond to the queries of the NPA, with the last date, April 13, 2018, already expired last Friday.

“We were waiting for Friday to expire before we take the next line of action but there are more companies and not just these seven. We are still building our case,” Mr Tampuli mentioned.

The companies

The CEO mentioned the errant companies as Union Oil Ghana Limited, Misyl Energy Company Limited, Excel Oil Company Limited, Unique Oil Company Limited, Life Petroleum Company Limited, Globex Energy Limited and Agapet Limited.

“For the BDCs, there is also Juwel and some other ones involved. They all have a deadline of Friday,” he indicated.