PETROSOL CEO urges GIPC to support local investors
The Chief Executive Officer of PETROSOL, an indigenous privately owned Oil Marketing Company(OMC), Mr Michael Bozumbil, has urged the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) to help address the challenges that local investors go through to attract investments and build sustainable businesses.
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He said if the local players were able to build strong and viable businesses, attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDIs) into the country could become very easy in all sectors.
Interacting with the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GIPC, Mr Yofi Grant when he led the management team of PETROSOL during a courtesy call, Mr Bozumbil said businesses were encountering some challenges that needed to be addressed, placing particular emphasis on the petroleum downstream sector.
According to him, the petroleum downstream sector was facing several challenges but one that was of major concern and threatening the survival of legitimate businesses is the illegal importation and sale of petroleum products without passing through the customs and thus evading the payment of taxes which constitute about 50 per cent of the pump prices of fuel.
“With this development, legitimate oil marketing companies which work hard to pay huge taxes to the state but only make a margin of about five per cent of the pump prices certainly cannot survive if unscrupulous people are allowed to bring in fuel and evade taxes since these people end up pricing out the legitimate operators and also denying the state of huge amount of tax revenue.”
“I felt so sad for the country when the Finance Minister indicated recently in his mid-year review of the budget that he could not meet his revenue target when so much tax revenue is being siphoned by these nation-wreckers,” Mr Bozumbil said.
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He said some operators have started laying off staff and that if this issue was not quickly addressed, more would be laid off to add to the already teaming unemployed youth.
Mr Grant expressed his appreciation to the management of PETROSOL for the visit and also for bringing the gravity of the issue to his attention, and promised to take it up for urgent attention.
He indicated that he was aware that the government was taking steps to act decisively on those evading taxes and asked for the co-operation and support of all stakeholders in ensuring that wrong doers are exposed and punished to create a congenial and level playing field for legitimate businesses to operate.
Mr Grant further indicated that in as much as the GIPC would be working on attracting foreign investment, it would do so in collaboration with indigenous investors and thus will work at addressing their concerns.
He encouraged Ghanaian businesses to register with the relevant business associations so as to have a critical mass with the voice to make a strong case for their concerns to be addressed.