Dr. Ruth Potopsingh, group managingdirector of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica. - File

Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Reporter

Petrol purchases for government-owned vehicles is a tight squeeze on the public purse as more than $1 billion has been spent at the pumps over the last two financial years to gas up the public-sector fleet.

As a result, Dr. Ruth Potopsingh, group managing director of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), is warning that the country cannot continue the current trend. "We have to do something about it. It is not sustainable," she said.

The more than half a billion dollars per annum that the Government has been spending since April 2005, is a 100 per cent increase in expenditure since the 1999 Orane Report on waste reduction in the public sector. The method of purchasing petrol and other supplies in the public sector was one of the main areas addressed in the Orane Report, which was so named after its chairman Douglas Orane, chairman and chief executive officer of GraceKennedy.

The analysis from the task force pointed out that despite the guidelines instituted by the Ministry of Finance and Planning to manage fuel consumption, there were concerns about the pervasive misuse and abuse inherent in the old manual system.

Recommendations

Among the recommendations made by the task force was the phased implementation of an advance-card system to replace the manual system, which operated by issuing coupons to the drivers of motor vehicles who, in turn, exchanged the coupons for gas.

Eight years after the report and the implementation of a more sophisticated and technological advanced mechanism involving the use of an electronic monitoring system available through Manufacturers' Credit and Information Services Limited (MCIS) for the purchase of petrol, the Government's total expenditure on petrol is still rising rapidly.

Dr. Potopsingh, who heads the company that is responsible for implementing the Government's energy policy and providing fuel for the country's development, largely attributes the continued spike in the oil bill for the public sector to the steady increase in world oil prices over the period.

She pointed out that since the time of the Orane Report, the price of petrol has jumped more than a 100 per cent. "The overall global increase has caused this tremendous increase in fuel, (so) this high bill is largely the result of increases in petrol," she said. However, when quizzed by The Sunday Gleaner about the need to put measures in place to reduce the bill, Dr. Potopsingh said: "Absolutely. And, as I said, we can do it by strategic planning."

Speaking specifically to the amount of money the country is spending on petrol for its vehicles, Dr. Potopsingh said: "It can't be good." In the same breath, she said that if Jamaica did not have its own refinery, the nation would have been faced with much higher petrol prices. "The refinery has helped to make fuels more affordable. If we did not have a local refinery the prices would be doubled," she explained.

While Dr. Potopsingh believes that the ministries have attempted to reduce their petrol consumption, she told The Sunday Gleaner that the current expenditure by Government and the general populace needs to be addressed. "It is something that we must intelligently and strategically address at all levels - from the individual level, to the sector level, to the national level."

While pointing out that world oil prices hit their highest mark ever last year when it reached US$78 per barrel, Dr. Potopsingh suggested that the petrol bill could be reduced by using motorcycles to do deliveries instead of sport-utility vehicles.

In addition to assigning motorcycles to its bearers, Dr. Potopsingh said the PCJ also deliberately plans routes to avoid traffic hold-ups. She also revealed that she has been trying to introduce the use of bicycles, but that has not been getting the support of the masses because it would be a "cultural shift".

Sport-utility vehicles

Information obtained from the Ministry of Finance shows that the Government spent close to $600 million in the last financial year to gas up the state-owned vehicles which include hundreds of high-end sports-utility vehicles. For the financial year April 2005 to March 2006, little over half a billion dollars was spent on petrol purchases. These figures do not include petrol purchased for buses operated by the Jamaica Urban Transit Company, as the state-owned bus company pays for its fuel.

The Sunday Gleaner was not successful in getting answers from the Ministry of Finance and Planning regarding specific Govern-ment policies to ease the effect of the increases in world oil prices on the country. Nor was there any answer to our queries regarding systems to prevent abuse and to ensure efficiency.