Good governance helps PetroVietnam achieve impressive growth

Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) enjoyed impressive production and business results in the first four months of 2021, thanks to its efforts to address bottlenecks to stimulate production and improve governance, besides an increase in oil prices.

The group’s exploitation output in oil equivalent in April exceeded the set plan by 7 percent, resulting in the four-month figure surpassing the plan by one percent.

Its total revenue in the period hit 124.4 trillion VND (5.43 billion USD), 21 percent higher than the set target and up 47 percent year-on-year.

Specifically, the group’s pre-tax profit is estimated at 15.4 trillion VND, a 2.46-fold increase compared to that of the same period last year.

In the period, PetroVietnam contributed 27.5 trillion VND to the State budget, also higher than the four-month plan and the same period last year.

In early April, Fitch Ratings revised the outlook for PetroVietnam to “positive” from “stable”.

It also assessed PetroVietnam’s standalone credit profile (SCP) at “BB ” and long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating (IDR) at “BB”.

Speaking at the group’s regular meeting recently held virtually, PetroVietnam General Director Le Manh Hung attributed the achievements to the group’s continuous efforts to carry out measures to boost production and improve corporate governance efficiency, together with an increase in oil prices.

From the beginning of 2021, Petrovietnam’s units have seriously followed
directions of the group’s leaders on updating and completing solutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and crude oil price fluctuations. Therefore, the pandemic prevention and control measures have been implemented effectively, with no infections recorded in the group so far.

However, the pandemic is developing complicatedly over the world, especially in Southeast Asian countries which share the borderlines with Vietnam such as Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, and in Vietnam as well with the occurrence of new outbreaks from late April. The group, therefore, is keeping a close watch on the developments and has made thorough preparations to have response solutions for different scenarios, considering this as a key task to ensure safety and stability, and not to disrupt production and business activities.

To that end, Hung directed the oil and gas exploration and exploitation units to focus on ensuring safety for exploitation activities, find more measures to stop the downtrend and increase the exploitation output and reserves, and continue to review costs and strengthen governance to reduce production costs, and improve exploitation efficiency.

Fertiliser businesses were required to take advantage of favourable market opportunities to boost production and increase gas consumption.

In order to promote the achieved results and to respond to the new developments of the pandemic, Hung directed the units to focus on assessing possible risks and fluctuations of the pandemic situation to update and carry out response solutions, and orient governance over production and business activities.

It is also necessary to review tasks and targets for the second quarter, and make efforts to solve works left from the first quarter; continue keeping a close watch on macro factors, foreign exchange rate and inflation fluctuations to assess the group’s financial resources for production and business activities; and focus resources on ensuring stable, safe and effective production, and at the same time bring into full play market opportunities.

The PetroVietnam General Director also emphasised the need to reduce costs, analyse cost and revenue fluctuations to have measures to increase the efficiency of operations, continue realizing chains in the group.

With positive results gained in the first four months of this year, Hung expressed his hope that the group’s units exert more efforts to maintain production and business activities and fulfill all assigned tasks./.