The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has directed Oil Marketing Companies to increase the Bulk Oil Storage and Transport (BOST) margin on petroleum products by three pesewas to six pesewas effective June 1. 

A May 29 memo sent to the Oil Marketing Companies indicated that the firms were all to review the BOST margin in their Price Build Up (PBU) of Petroleum products effective June 1, 2020, to the new amount. 

According to the momo, cited by JoyBusiness, the development is in line with a decision taken by Cabinet and Communicated to the National Petroleum Authority. The communique said all the various petroleum products from Petrol at Kore Mines are expected to apply the new levy of 6 pesewas.

Background

The National Petroleum Authority was, in 2019, forced abandoned a similar move after it emerged that the necessary legal backing and approvals were not finalised before the said communication was made to increase the margin from 3 to 6 pesewas. 

BOST recently began a campaign making a strong case for the margin to increase because the current levy is not adequate, maintaining that it was needed to improve the company’s infrastructure.

The Managing Director, Edwin Provencal in a recent engagement with some civil society organisations in the energy sector and a cross-section of the media in Tema.

Impact on prices

Prices of the various petroleum products are expected to be reviewed from June 1, 2020 in line with the two-week adjustments.

There were predictions that prices could go up by some significant increase based on this review. This would however be dependent on the margin of adjustment of the market leader GOIL.

But some market players have told JoyBusiness that based on this increase on BOST margin it would now be difficult to absorb increase as some of them were planning do for this pricing window.

Prices should have gone up in the last pricing window that’s from May 15 to 31, 2020.

However, most of the players held their prices unchanged because the market leader GOIL failed to move.