BOST positioned for growth - Edwin Provencal

Managing Director of Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST), Edwin Provencal, has revealed that the firm is now well positioned to keep generating and increasing revenue in coming years due to efficient and prudent management.

According to him, the management team and staff are poised to make BOST profitable in the long term to prove to Ghanaians that state enterprises too can also be efficient and profitable like the other multinational firms in the private sector

Mr Provencal further declared that Bost is working to build LPG farms across all the sixteen regions of the country in a bid to facilitate LPG distribution across the country.

Mr Provencal made this known at a press briefing at the Ministry of Information in Accra yesterday.

He said plans are far advanced for the construction of a pipeline from Accra to Kumasi as part of efforts to improve efficiency in the distribution of petroleum products

Touching on allegations of fuel dilution and contamination, he said “I can assure Ghanaians that there will be no contamination within BOST as public organisation again.”

Further, he said though a country like Cote d’Ivoire is exporting refined petroleum products to some countries in the regions, Ghana’s petroleum products are much preferred due to its quality and is the most preferred.

The profit after tax of The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) increased to Ghc164 million in 2021 from Ghc2 million Cedis in the year 2020. This implies that the profit after tax of the firm grew 82 times compared to the 2020 figure recorded.

The growth has been described by financial experts and stakeholders as remarkable.

Among other things, the administrative expenses of BOST recorded a drastic reduction over the period with a record of Ghc 228.1million in 2021 with staff strength of 496 compared to a sum of Ghc 538.3 million recorded in 2016 as administrative expenses with staff strength of 347.

The drastic reduction in administrative expenses is attributed to the prudent management of operations by the current management team.

The company paid about US 611 million out of a debt portfolio of US622.7 million dollars.

The remaining 11.7 million dollars is expected to be cleared by the end of next year, according to Marlick Adjei, Head of Corporate Communications and External Affairs at BOST.

Out of the payment, the company’s internally generated funds (IGF) accounted for 70 per cent ($426 million), with the government providing 30 per cent through the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) bond, he explained.

In 2021 BOST generated a revenue of about Ghc 1.12 billion compared to Ghs632.7 million recorded in 2020.

BOST is also undertaking initiatives to stay on track in the execution of its mandate. These include the rehabilitation of 12 of its 15 storage tanks which stood decommissioned as at January 2017, revamping of its transmission lines and the rehabilitation of the tugboat and barges, which are all contributing to the revenue streams of the company.

This has kept the firm active and is presently exporting petroleum products to Mali.

The company’s export to Mali has grown from 0.3 per cent in 2019 to six percent, a remarkable achievement.

The company was ranked 8th on the Public Enterprises League Table in 2020.

According to the Head of Corporate Communications and External Affairs, the 2021 results speaks volumes and the company is expected to be counted among the first five properly run State Owned Enterprises in the country.