By SOLOMON ASOWATA

Mr Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says he is optimistic that the corporation will declare dividends in 2020 in spite of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Kyari spoke at an interactive session with the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) in Abuja on Friday.

He said: “Our vision is that NNPC will become a company of excellence and declare dividends to Nigerians and shareholders.

“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.”

Kyari said that accountability and transparency were key to turning NNPC into an efficient and profit-oriented enterprise.

He said this was what informed the decision of the corporation to publish its operational and financial reports monthly.

Kyari said: “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.

“We were not afraid of doing that and there were a lot of criticisms that we lost money in refinery operations and pipeline business.

“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.

“That means we reduced 97 per cent of our losses by cutting our cost and improving our efficiency.”

He said that the NNPC 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. (NAN)

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