The Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods reconstituted the Supervisory Committee on Fuel Oil Import, Storage and Distribution on 13 October 2023.
The committee was reestablished to effectively steer the oil import, storage and distribution sector and ensure standard quality for the imported fuel oil and stable prices for energy consumers, incorporating the stakeholders from the public and private sectors into the committee.
The deputy minister for Energy serves as chairman of the committee with seven members from the Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce, Petroleum Products Regulatory Department under the Ministry of Energy and Foreign Exchange Management Department.
The functions of the committee are to prevent loss of revenue for the State, achieve price stability, supervise the application of import licences for fuel oil, issuance of licence and oil import, storage, sales and distribution of oil systematically, ensure meeting standard quality for imported oil, tackle delays in oil tankers docking, monitor the oil supply to the tanks and daily stocks on hand, and evaluate oil security period.
Additionally, the committee has to immediately inform the matters regarding quality suspicious activities to the Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods and daily report the importing companies, exporting country, import volume (tonne), registration number and date of arrival of oil tankers to the Foreign Exchange Management Committee and the Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods.
Also, the committee will frequently assess quality during the time of oil distribution from storage tanks.
Afterwards, the committee will have to inform the status of the stocks in the storage tanks to the Central Committee on Ensuring Smooth Flow of Trade and Goods. The committee will also have to keep a traceability record to check if any fraudulent and deceptive practices are found in the supply chain (from imports to distribution procedures) in an attempt to manipulate prices. — NN/EM
