Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,NNPC, says from January till date, government lost seven billion dollars about two point one trillion naira to the activities of militancy groups and oil pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta region.

Its Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru, said this at the 2016 Fiscal Liquidity Assessment Committee Retreat.

Baru made a presentation on “Global Oil Prices, Militancy and Terrorism and its Impact on Government Revenue in Nigeria’’, saying apart from security challenges in the region, politics, judiciary, oil prices and production cost continued to impact negatively on the oil industry.

To resolve this, Baru said the NNPC planned to increase security of oil and gas assets, improve its community social responsibility and the Amnesty programme, saying the NNPC planned “to renegotiate terms of Production Sharing Contract with deep offshore operating companies because with the current agreement, only 17.7 per cent of total revenue comes to government’’.

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said the ministry had succeeded in reducing Federal Government’s monthly wage bill from N165 billion to N142 billion by eliminating 33,000 ghost workers.

Adeosun, said the ministry had discovered that it could also save money by reviewing government’s procurement processes, saying through the Efficiency Unit, the ministry had succeeded in negotiating huge discounts for government officials travelling on local and international flights for official assignments.

The Minister who spoke through Head of the Efficiency Unit at the Ministry, Patience Oniha, said the ministry had also been able to save cost by banning sitting allowances, souvenirs at government’s functions and unnecessary adverts which had contributed to the high recurrent expenditure in government.