Senators in the Committee on Downstream were shocked when a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, disclosed that it spent $11 million on staff transfer and vehicles maintenance.
According to NAPIMS, $9 million was spent on staff transfer cost in the agency, while $2 million was spent on vehicles maintenance.
NAPIMS, which was represented by Engineer Catherine Ngozi Iheme at the budget defence of the agency, said the budget of the agency for 2016 was $168 million.
Iheme said: “On staff transfers, we are part of the NNPC Group and sometimes you have transfer of staff in and out of NAPIMS.
“So these transfers cost is $9 million.”
The Committee however complained about lump sums by NAPIMS under both capital expenditure and operating expenditure.
The Committee demanded for the details of the $168 million, which agency promised to made available at the next meeting.
Earlier, the Management of NAPIMS had a running battle over the exchange rate used by the agency throughout the 2016 budget, but when issue was not resolved.
The Chairman of the Committee, Tayo Alasoadura, directed the agency to proceed with presentation.
On the issue of cash calls, Iheme said: “Recall that the Senate had raised issues on our cash calls for 2011 to 2015 and we have working committees together to reconcile the books.
“So we just felt that we should present an update for 2016, that is why we just presented it.
“The total revenue budget was short by 28 per cent as at the end of the year on what we have planned.
“That is oil and gas the revenue receipt was short by 28 per cent.
“In actual funding of the JV, we had a whooping minus 45 per cent shortfall in JV releases.
“This definitely created the gap we had in our production.”
NNPC subsidiary spends $11m on staff transfer cost, vehicles maintenance
