In the face of financial woes, the public sector entity Pakistan State Oil (PSO) has registered an increase in sales revenues of Rs 663 billion over the nine months period ended on March 31. During the corresponding period last year, the company’s sale revenues stood at Rs 627 billion, showing an increase of 5.6 percent. Similarly according to official sources, PSO posted improved after tax earnings of Rs 9.25 billion during the same period as compared to Rs 7.53 billion last year. The country’s overall fuel consumption during the period under review has declined by 1.7 percent as compared to the corresponding period last year.
In terms of black oil, the industry declined by 1.6 percent, while in the case of white oil, it declined by 1.9 percent. However, PSO maintained its position as the market leader with the share in both black oil and white oil segments standing at 77.9 percent and 54.3 percent, respectively, thereby contributing to an overall market share of 65.4 percent. The company also earned 20th position amongst the top 100 Companies of the Ummah.
During the third quarter, the PSO had been the only Pakistani company that was featured amongst these corporate giants in the annual Dinar Standard survey. This quarter, PSO has also endeavored to create awareness on climate change behavior, by joining the Earth Hour campaign on March 26, 2011, the world’s largest global climate change initiative. Meanwhile the PSO’s Board of Management extended a warm welcome to the new PSO MD Jehangir Ali Shah and expressed confidence in his abilities. However, the board also showed serious concern on the spiraling circular debt situation which is undermining the company’s performance.
The board observed that the financial costs associated with servicing this debt coupled with consistent non-payment from the power sector continued to hurt the overall profitability of the company.
Reviewing the company’s performance the board also directed efforts to be made to reduce the impact of the burdening financial costs through constant pursuit for recovery of receivables from the power sector entities as well as from the government of Pakistan.
