World Bank Impressed with Kachikwu’s ’20 Fixes’ at NNPC

By Chineme Okafor in Abuja

The World Bank on Wednesday said it was impressed with the ’20 fixes’ adopted by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, to reposition the corporation into a profit-yielding entity.

The bank also commended Kachikwu for bringing transparency and accountability to bear on the operations of NNPC and Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.

A statement from the Group General Manager Public Affairs of NNPC, Mallam Garuba Deen Muhammad, in Abuja contained this development.

It stated that the Managing Director of the Bank, Sri Mulyani Indrawati said this when she paid an official visit to Kachikwu in his office in Abuja.

According to Indrawati, the ’20 fixes’ introduced by Kachikwu to the NNPC business models have gone a long way to reform the corporation for profitability.

She said the Bank was ready and available to offer the ministry of petroleum resources technical support, advice and funding.

She stressed that adoption of sound policy thrusts was key in the areas of fiscal direction, gas flare out and gas to power for Nigeria.

The statement also quoted Kachikwu to have said that since he assumed duty in August 2015, he had introduced lots of reforms ranging from the first phase of restructuring and the recent restructuring which served as enablers for the introduction of new business models that have drastically reduced the losses recorded by the NNPC in the past.

“We first started with the softer issues which were transparency issues, governance, restructuring and that was going well when we went straight into the business model.