Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, headed the General Assembly, held for a number of oil companies, to adopt planning budgets for the fiscal year 2016/2017, reported Egypt Oil & Gas.

Tarek El Molla stressed that the new budgets were ambitious and focused on rationalizing expenditure and organizing revenue streams. He also emphasized the importance to implement projects in line with the set schedule and added that it was a priority to enhance productivity of the existing units with a strict adherence to periodic maintenance of productive assets and their upgrading.

The Minister underlined the vital role that the public sector oil companies played in various petroleum activities and in the provision of petroleum products for the domestic market on a regular basis. The prior actions taken by the Ministry of Petroleum in order to avoid bottlenecks in the petroleum products market, foremost the butane, had paid off, especially during the winter period, he said. The strategic imperative of the petroleum sector was the stability of the market of petroleum products so that people can attain their needs easily.

According to a press release, Amiriya, Alexandria, Nasr and SOPC – the Suez Oil Processing companies, Petrogas, and the Egyptian Petrochemicals Company, participated in the assembly. The Minister of Local Development, Ahmed Zaki Badr, the First Undersecretary of the Ministry for Petroleum for Gas Affairs, Sherif Sousse, and the First Undersecretary for Petroleum Affairs, Mohamed Tahir, also attended the meeting, along with the heads the holding companies including EGPC. The First Undersecretary of CAPMAS, Zainab Bayoumi, was also present, as were representatives of the Ministries of Commerce, Industry, Planning and Finance, and Information, and Decision Support Center (IDSC).