Unioil have nothing to hide in their accounting books
One of the country's leading independent oil firms yesterday welcome the announcement of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's directive for the Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct an audit on the books of oil companies to check on whether their was an overpricing in local pump prices.
Unioil General Manager Chito Medina-Cue Jr. said the company welcomes any audit as they have nothing to hide from government's scrutiny.
"Unioil have nothing to hide in our accounting books. We welcome this development and in fact we are willing to be reviewed and assessed as long as other oil companies will be subjected to similar actions," Medina-Cue said in a statement.
Earlier, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo directed Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Angelo Reyes to conduct an "intensive audit" of oil and power companies following continued increases in prices despite a slight reduction in world crude prices.
Arroyo order was issued during Tuesday's National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Cabinet group meeting saying it was the government's response to clamors for it to be more pro-active, especially in light of development in the world prices.
But Medina-Cue said that an audit is nothing new as Unioil has been subjected to similar moves in the past by other government agencies and nothing wrong was found.
"They have done that before and for all I know its nothing new, even other government agencies does monitoring and auditing like the Bureau of Internal Revenue. So this come not a surprise to us, more so since our books are always opened for audit," the Unioil official said.
Last week, Unioil rolled back prices of gasoline sold in its outlet by P1.50 per liter setting a trend that was later followed by other oil companies.
The company said the rollback was in response to the decline in the prices of crude in the international market.
Unioil has more than 40 outlets in Luzon alone while it is eyeing further expansion with an initial P90 million plan for six new stations located in Quezon city, Caloocan, Las Pinas and Makati.
It has also outlets in Visayas and the Mindanao region.
Aside from these, the company operates a modern oil storage facility in Bataan with a capacity of 1 million barrels and is set to expand to 1.5 million capacity.