The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has intensified its effort to resolve the pushbacks from the stakeholders on the collection of the 0.5 per cent of wholesale price of petroleum products and natural gas.
Daily Trust reports that under the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) signed in 2021, sections 47 and 52 empowers the NMDPRA to collect these levies as part of its revenue.
Speaking on the potency of the law for NMDPRA to generate revenue, the secretary and legal adviser, NMDPRA, Dr. Joseph Tolorunse during a workshop held on Monday, stressed the importance of the law.
“There were some thorny issues encountered when we were implementing the PIA, these are the issues we wanted to discuss with the stakeholders so that we can reach alignment.
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“One of the issues is the implementation of government remittance, especially the 0.5 per cent of wholesale price of petroleum products and natural gas because the provision of sections 47 and 52 of the PIA empowers the authority to collect these levies as part of its revenue,” he said.
He added that the law failed to specify the entity to collect the 0.5 per cent of wholesale price of petroleum products, saying the authority seeks players in the Upstream to collect the levy on behalf of it at the point of wholesale to the consumers.
He stressed that some companies have been paying while some have failed to comply, attributing it to the delay in the implementation of the PIA Act.
“We are having resistance in the sense that implementation did not begin immediately when the law was passed because we need to make regulations and guidelines to specific the procedure for collections,” he said.
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