The Director of Corporate Communications and External Relations at the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) has said that BOST has turned the loss making situation around.

Speaking on Top Story on Monday, April 11, 2022, Mr. Marlick Adjei indicated this in respect to the profit before tax situation, adding that BOST is profitable.

“When you study the audited financial statement of BOST from 2016, 2016 there was a loss before income tax of GHC533 million-plus which is half a billion. It declined to GHC112 million, and as of 2019, GHC158 million was the loss before income tax, so to have made GHC9.8 million profit before tax is where we say that we have turned the loss making situation around,” he said.

“Now when it comes to assessing the efficiency of a business and how the management is managing same, you look at whether the underlining business is profitable or otherwise… From an administrative expense position GHC533 million in 2016, the further administrative expenses of the company in the year 2020 is declined to GHC199 million which is les than GHC200 million, he added.

His comment comes after the State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA) reported that BOST recorded a loss of GH¢291.02 million in 2022.

According to him, “in the country of increasing inflation and the depreciation of the cedi, the expectation is that administrative expenses on average, will be on the rising trajectory.”

He added that for the administrative expenses to have fallen from GHC530 million down to GHC199 million “tells you that something big is happening.”

“With the total of 18 percent of revenue earning asset in operation as at January, 2018, as we speak today 91% of all revenue earning asset of BOST, including four river barges, two major pipelines are in full operation,” he added.

He also noted that 15 out of the 51 tanks of BOST have been decommissioned and 12 out of the 15 have been fully serviced and have been made available for the storage of products.

According to him, the above-mentioned indicates that BOST is having “a strong cash flow position and it’s no longer waits for overdraft to be able to pay salary of workers. This tells you that the company is on its way out of the wind.”

But BOST in a statement has dismissed the claims raised by SIGA.

According to BOST “the report of the GH¢400 million losses made by BOST is not accurate. “To measure the profitability and operational efficiency of a Business, one must determine whether the underlying operations (core business) of the company are profitable,” it said.

It added that its income-earning assets in the past two years have improved from 18% to 91%.

Commenting on SIGA’s report, Mr. Adjei said that “when you have dollar-denominated notes in your portfolio and there is a depreciation of the currency, the forex loss is also fixed against your profit and loss and BOST as a company is not in charge of the management of the value of the cedi and for that matter when forex losses come and get paid and you come to the bottom line and there is a negative, assessing Management performance, in our view with that number, will not be fair.”