PIB: NARTO Seeks Waiver Of Withholding Tax

Even as stakeholders brainstorm on the Petroleum  Industry Bill (PIB), the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) has called on the National Assembly to incorporate waiver of five per cent withholding tax on payment for lifting of petroleum products by their trucks at fuel depots and refineries.
Under the present dispensation, all truck loading products at  refineries and depots are required to pay a five per cent withholding tax, but National Operations Co-ordinator of NARTO, Alhaji Lawal Isa was unacceptable.
Alhaji Isa said in NARTO’s  the presentation in Abuja at the public hearing being conducted on the PIB  by the Senate Joint Committee on petroleum that the  anomaly of five per cent withholding tax being paid to the government by their tanker trucks for lifting petroleum products at refineries and depots should be corrected.
NARTO is the umbrella association of all commercial vehicle owners; it commands about1606 tanker trucks for lifting of petroleum products from all functional refineries and depots on daily basis to meet Nigeria’s estimated daily consumption of 33 million litres. 
According to Isa, the removal is necessary since the PIB is in pursuit of transparency, accountability and openness in the management of revenues in the oil and gas industry.
Saying that another operator within the oil sector was once subjected to the same practice, but a waiver was considered for them after requests were made, the NARTO boss pleaded that the same should be accorded to his association.