By Obas Esiedesa

The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari has explained that deep adjustment and other stringent measures moved the corporation from a loss making business to profitability in two years.

Kyari told journalists in Abuja on Thursday that as at 2018 NNPC recorded N803 billion losses which fell to N1.7 billion in 2019.

He described the N287 billion profit made in 2020 as a watershed moment for the corporation.

According to him, NNPC is no longer a loss making business but will look to improve on its performance especially under the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA.

“This is a very proud moment for us, because to our shareholders. We’re no longer declaring losses. As a matter of fact, just like last years as we moved from loss level of N803 billion in 2018, we reduce it to N1.7 billion in 2019 and in 2020 fiscal year we’re making profit after tax of N287 billion. This is no doubt a huge progress, but by no means is sufficient. This is the largest corporation in Africa”, he stated.

On the changes made by the Corporation, he said: “There are very drastic changes to the way we do our business. One is to cut costs, to be more efficient, and also to ensure that this company is transparent and accountable to Nigerian people, and therefore is a process that started in 2015.

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“The first principle of course elimination is that, don’t buy what you don’t need. And we simply stopped buying what we don’t need. Also, particularly in fiscal 2020 whoever they engaged in all our contracts we insisted on cutting costs to at least 30 percent.

“This worked, and we’re able to pull down most of our procurement costs by 30 percent totally. We saw the opportunity to be much more efficient by automating our system and process, and processes that made us faster and also ultimately it reduced so much of logistic costs that ordinarily would have been additional costs on our business so why do you combine all these”.

Earlier, the Minister of State Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva praised the NNPC board and management for the feat, saying “we are proud of everyone”.