Finance PS highlights latent petroleum depot issues

He made this statement Monday 26 August 2024 in response to allegations of tax evasion and bribery, which are currently under investigation by the Joint Committee on Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) and the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC), at the National Assembly, where he appeared before the committees to clarify the allegations.In response to what mechanisms are in place in terms of traders dropping in products, PS Jobe said: “What I understand of what is going on is that I know the depot is a bonded warehouse; so you can have traders dropping their products. Plus maybe the positive aspect of it is; you will have product all year round, especially since you have an Oil Marketing Company (OMC) that can't be able to import. So, you can have a product there, but the only time that you will have access to the product is if you pay for it.“So no international trader would come and drop his product at the depot; they needed someone to buy it and don't have the luxury of leaving their products idle in a place waiting for a customer or an OMC to come and buy it. That would be a misnomer.”Mr Jobe explained that no trader would bring their products or pick up a ship to transport thousands of metric tonnes and come to the depot to unload without an OMC requesting the need for products.He mentioned that one has to request from the depot and they have to ask for an importation plan to share with the authorities to determine the amount of metric tonnes to be brought yearly.He added that the reason for doing that was to ensure that the country never experienced stock-out of products at any point in time.However, it was put to PS Jobe that instead of the OMCs doing the negotiations with the international traders, it is the depot that is doing the negotiations, which metamorphosed on October 28, 2023.Asked what was the role of the Ministry of Finance during the formulation of that policy, the other PS for Finance Abdoulie Jallow, in response, made it known that there was no Ministry of Petroleum then, thus subsequently when it came to fuel matters, it was looked at as a fiscal issue and the Ministry of Finance “took the lead in terms of fuel management, pricing and all”.“It's only up to recently, I think in 2021, 2022, if my memory serves me right, that’s when we handed over the issues of fuel matters to the Ministry of Petroleum,” he explained.“But the Ministry of Finance was doing the pricing of it unilaterally in terms of pricing fuel products. And here, this is where the Ministry was also part and parcel of the steering committee. It extended not only to them; you have the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Petroleum, the Standards Bureau being part of it, and also the Gambia Revenue Authority is part of the committee as well. So, all of these institutions are already in place once it was handed back to the Ministry of Petroleum.”The joint committee, in closing the session, requested documents to further look into the policies and transactions of fuel deals in the country.