Celebrating BOST’s shining story

On Friday morning, work took me to the swanky, impressive mammoth of a building that houses the Bulk Energy Storage and Transportation Limited (BOST) on Gulf Street in Shiashie, Accra, inaugurated in March last year by Vice-President Dr Bawumia. 

The occasion was the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the Minister of State at the Ministry of Energy, Herbert Krapa, was in attendance, representing the government, the sole shareholder in the company. 

Profile

As a private limited liability company under the Companies Act,1963 (Act 179) with the Government of Ghana as the sole shareholder, BOST has the mandate to develop a network of storage tanks, pipelines and other bulk transportation infrastructure throughout the country, to rent or lease out part of the storage facilities to enable it to generate income, to keep strategic reserve stocks for Ghana, to own, manage and develop a national network of oil pipelines and storage depots, to manage the “Zonalisation” policy of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and to develop the Natural Gas Infrastructure throughout the country.

The company’s Managing Director since 2019 is Dr Edwin Provencal, with over 18 years’ experience in executive management roles, while its board is chaired by Ekow Hackman, a business consultant and economist, who was appointed in 2018.

Together, they have led the company to drive important reforms and strategies that have pushed the company into robust financial health from the intensive care unit, so to speak.

Performance

From a position of consistent losses from 2013 to 2020, with the highest loss recorded in 2016 at GH¢459 million, the company has now made a ‘hat-trick’ of profits from 2021 through to the 2023 financial year.

Specifically, the company declared profits of GH¢160 million in 2021, GH¢342 million in 2022 and GH¢208 million in 2023. Additionally, the company’s equity position increased from GHS¢86 million in 2022 to GH¢277 million in 2023. 

Two years ago, when the then Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, attended the company’s maiden AGM, he praised the board and management for their remarkable transformation of the company and urged them to sustain the great work. Clearly it appears they paid heed. So how did this ‘magic’ happen?

According to Dr Provencal, BOST began its five-year turnaround strategy journey in 2020 with a focus on two key pillars, Enhancing Operational Excellence and Aggressively Growing the Business, underpinned by rebranding its corporate image and setting out to measure it success through four key metrics, hinged on the belief that ‘what gets measured gets managed.

Other key growth initiatives included human capital development and the implementation of a performance management system across the business. He noted further the enhancement of the company’s governance performance, with several awards to its credit.

As the Director-General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), John Boadu, noted at the AGM, despite the passage of time and increasing prices in the country, management has been able to keep the administrative expenses at a level which in 2023 was still lower than the GH¢538 million in 2016.

Arithmetically, he noted further, if the administrative expenses of the three years of profit had stayed at this 2023 level, the company would have repeated losses from 2021 to 2023, meaning that cost consciousness and the courage to defy the odds had made a huge difference. 

Looking ahead

Board chairman Mr Hackman points to the company’s Depot Upgrade Project, which aims to enhance operational efficiency, its Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) for its Tema-Kumasi pipeline, a 12-inch pipeline from Tema to Akosombo, diversification of its product line to include Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) and the acquisition of barges to enhance the capacity of the company’s export corridor to the north of the country as some of its plans for the future.

His vision for the company with respect to its next strategic plan is the investment in its human capacity to foster a culture of continuous development and learning, including adoption of new technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as energy transition.

Shining example

Ordinarily, an AGM, particularly of a state-owned company, is routine, should not be attracting any discussions beyond a news item, but I think BOST’s impressive achievements deserve wider circulation and discussion particularly because of its remarkable turnaround. This is more so within the context of the fact that many state-owned enterprises historically performed less than impressively almost as a matter of routine.

I think the BOST story typifies what effective management with a private sector mindset can bring to the public sector by way of efficiency and profitability and offers a good template for other operators in the state sector. State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) need not be synonymous with inefficiencies.

Three cheers to the board, management and staff of BOST!

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,
Head, Communications &
Public Affairs Unit,
Ministry of Energy.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com