Govt takes measures to end fuel theft at port

Dodoma. The government has said that it is taking deliberate measures to end incidences of fuel theft at the Dar es Salaam port as a way of making the sea gateway more competitive against peers and turning Tanzania into a business friendly nation.

The decision comes against a backdrop of complaints from some petroleum marketing companies who allege that some unscrupulous people have been systematically stealing fuel during the time of discharging the same from the ship to storage tanks.

Puma Energy Tanzania for instance is on record as having lost $1.4 million (about Sh3 billion) during the 15 months between January 2014 and March 2015, according to the company’s chairman Dr Ben Moshi.

“We believe there was a systematic theft of fuel there because basically, the recommended fuel loss during discharging is supposed to be 0.3 per cent of the consignment but we have been losing up to three and four per cent,” he said here last week during an event where the company presented a Sh4.5 billion cheque to the Finance and Planning Minister Dr Phillip Mpango.

The money was paid as dividend – accrued from 2015 profits - to the government which has a 50 per cent stake in the company.

But the eeputy Minister for Energy and Minerals, Dr Medard Kaleman, said the government has formed the Bulk Procurement Agency which will among other issues, work towards curbing such malpractices.

“We have been working on the fuel theft problem for some time now and so far, things are going in the right direction…the Bulk Procurement Agency has been mandated to coordinate the entire process from purchasing to discharging,” he said here last week.

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