Mele Kyari, the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL, has announced that the Central Bank of Nigeria has set up a department to manage crude oil sales transactions by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
The decision to transfer significant portions of the company's revenues to the apex bank was approved by the Board of Directors of NNPCL, as disclosed by Kyari.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), being the sole importer of PMS into Nigeria for several years, has declared that there will be no immediate increase in the price of petrol, also known as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS)
In January, reports indicated that President Bola Tinubu had instructed the CBN to take over the responsibility for crude oil sales proceeds from the NNPCL. As a result, the commission is expected to submit the receipts for crude oil sales to CBN for vetting and documentation.
The meeting between the CBN delegation, led by the bank's Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, and the management of NNPCL at the latter's headquarters in Abuja was captured in a video made available to journalists. Kyari welcomed the decision to transfer the oil firm's transactions to CBN.
He said, “We welcome the governor of the CBN and his senior management team to NNPC Ltd. We understand very clearly that this review of our decision to move significant portions of our revenues to the CBN is very timely.
“We made that decision in line with the directives of our Board of Directors to maintain safe obligor limits with commercial banks. And for us to do this, we do need additional support, particularly from the CBN to achieve this.
“We are a very huge company, our transaction and liquidity levels are very high, and perhaps we are the largest business in this country. We are also happy that the CBN has created a robust digital platform for our transactions.”
Cardoso mentioned that the CBN had restructured its internal processes to handle the immense responsibility that would be entrusted to it by the national oil company.
