2022-2024 MTEF/FSP: Reps warn PPPRA against sabotage


The House of Representatives Committee on Finance, has for the umpteenth time warned the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) against sabotaging its efforts at designing an effective budgetary framework for the federal government.

The committee, which had for about two weeks running, been engaging Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) over plans to design an effective budget for the 2022 fiscal, based on templates submitted by the federal government in the proposed 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) had loggerheads with PPPRA, when the agency could not provide it with accurate data on how much of petroleum motor spirit (PMS) Nigerians consume. 

At the resumed hearing of the panel on Thursday, its Chairman, James Faleke, issued the warning when from the roll call of agencies expected in attendance showed that PPPRA was not represented, frowning at the failure of the agency’s Executive Secretary, Mr. Abdulkadir Saidu  to appear as scheduled.

“We write you to appear before us today. You were here two days ago. And you presented documents to us which we reviewed. But we discovered that your figures contradicted itself and we asked you to take a date to appear; and you took yesterday (Wednesday). Yesterday, suddenly you presented a letter to say you couldn’t come.

“Today (Thursday), we are here, you must appear before us with your documents. Your figures will determine the volume that we consume in this country and the under-recovery. We need to know and if you don’t bring them, we will of course take the appropriate action against you,” he said.

The agency’s team which later showed up could still not stairs the committee, when details of its monthly estimated consumption based on truck-out from the farm tanks seemingly showed that remittance of the applicable charges per litre of PMS were below the expected, and was asked by the committee to yet, go back and reconcile its figures preparatory for the second leg of the engagements, expected to begin after two weeks.

Closing the first session on Thursday, Faleke in his remarks said, “To enhance the performance of the economy on the fiscal side, there is an urgent need to establish the country’s actual daily PMS consumption as data from the relevant stakeholders in the downstream sector were found to be conflicting.

He also lamented that agencies have leveraged on their establishment Acts to spend their IGR thereby denying the government the needed revenue.
“The Committee established that some of these Acts are self serving and against national interest. The need to expeditiously amend such Acts cannot therefore be overemphasized,” he said.