The Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) has re­spond­ed to ques­tions raised by pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Robin Narayns­ingh con­cern­ing re­cent­ly re­port­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and the com­pa­ny’s stance with re­gard to rur­al sta­tions and its prof­itabil­i­ty.

In the re­lease NP said, “In light of the is­sues raised, NP takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to Mr Narayns­ingh’s state­ment that the state en­ter­prise (NP) ‘has not pub­lished its fi­nan­cials for the last three or five years.’ NP wish­es to state that the com­pa­ny’s con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments 2020 were in fact pub­lished in the news­pa­per on Fri­day No­vem­ber 10, 2023. As it re­lates to the oth­er years, we wish to ad­vise that fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2021 have been com­plet­ed and are to be sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Fi­nance as is re­quired, 2022 is al­most com­plete and 2023 is cur­rent­ly in progress.”

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “As it re­lates to Mr Narayns­ingh’s as­ser­tion that NP’s chair­man, Sahid Ho­sein said that the com­pa­ny is not mak­ing mon­ey, NP wish­es to clar­i­fy that what was in fact stat­ed was that of the 117 ac­tive ser­vice sta­tions in the com­pa­ny’s net­work, 65 of the sta­tions (lo­cat­ed in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties) are prof­itable for the op­er­a­tor but un­eco­nom­i­cal for NP.

“How­ev­er, al­though the vol­umes in these com­mu­ni­ty sites are low, NP sup­ports and sub­si­dizes them and con­tin­ues to ho­n­our its so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ser­vice those ar­eas. More­over, it must be not­ed that the Com­pa­ny’s prof­its are not sole­ly de­rived from its ser­vice sta­tion net­work but rather oth­er rev­enue gen­er­at­ing lines of busi­ness in­clud­ing Avi­a­tion and Ma­rine fu­els and lu­bri­cants.”

NP al­so re­spond­ed to Narayns­ingh’s state­ment that NP “col­lects mon­ey, from the Gov­ern­ment and the PDA”.

NP said, “It has not re­ceived any PSIP Fund­ing since 2013; how­ev­er, over the last sev­en years NP has spent mil­lions of its own funds on the ser­vice sta­tion net­work. As a whole­saler, NP re­ceives the whole­sale mar­gin which aids in sup­port­ing these small­er com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vice sta­tions, sup­ports the main­te­nance of ser­vice sta­tions na­tion­wide as well as funds trans­porta­tion of fu­el to ser­vice sta­tions in To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er in re­sponse to the state­ment Narayns­ingh said NP re­lease con­firmed the is­sue he had raised with re­gard to the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion.

“The last three years have not been pub­lished. The last pub­lic state­ments was done in 2020 and 2023 is not pub­lished. So in oth­er words they con­cur with what I was say­ing,” said Narayns­ingh.