Managing Director of Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company Limited, Mr. Edwin Nii Obadai Provencal has bemoaned the perception of corruption taking the center stage of the operation of BOST.

According to him, the perception of corruption has put fear in investors to want to come and do business with BOST, making it difficult for the company to compete with others in the petroleum business.

Engaging with stakeholders to understand the core mandate of BOST, Mr. Edwin Provencal told Peacefmonline.com in an interview that the general perception of corruption is based on the media publicity given to the company in the recent past.

He was of the view that the status quo is about to change in his tenure as the new Managing Director of BOST, hence the engagement with the various stakeholders to corporate with the new management in order to change the wrong perception about BOST through deeds and not in words.

He, however, mentioned that there are three critical things that the new management need to turn things around in the company; thus, he is poised to transform BOST within 24 months providing the legacy debts and BOST margin which has been agreed to move to 11 pesewas in 2017 will be implemented.

He stated that the BOST margin has lost its value as it has remained at 3 pesewas since 2011, making it difficult to maintain this strategic infrastructure to meet one of its core mandates as an organization.

He again hinted that the legacy debts of $60 million if taken care of will boost the credibility of BOST to go to investors; revealing that the legacy debts have become a hindrance as most of the investors the company has engaged are asking for the debts to be settled before they can transact business with BOST.

To him, “once, the legacy debts are settled, we will be very attractive to investors and when BOST margin is increased, we will be able to maintain and build additional infrastructure and within two years, we will be making huge revenue for the country”.

He added as part of his activities to transform BOST, they need to build the infrastructure needed to transport not only gasoline and gasoil but also for the gas; thus, going forward, they may need investment for other types of infrastructure and network.

“There are three critical things that we need to achieve. The first one is that the BOST margin has lost its value and in order to really maintain this strategic infrastructure, we need about Ghc11 but we are not even asking for Ghc11, we just asking for government to implement the agreed 6 pesewas in 2017 and we are going to try to put that in good use to ensure that the national infrastructure does not decay”, he stated.

He reiterated that “we look forward to building the infrastructure needed to transport not only gasoline and gasoil but also for the gas; so, going forward, we may need investment for other types of infrastructure and the network. We want to help become cost-efficient and in order to become cost-efficient, we need to upgrade our network and we will need money to upgrade our network. These three things, once, we get done will put us on the path to be one of the best run depots or best-run petroleum storage and transmission infrastructure in West Africa”.