Qatar Wood (Woqod) has posted a net profit of QR373 million ($100 million) for the first half (H1) of the year as compared to QR540 million for the same period in 2016, with a decrease of QR167 million or 31 per cent.

Chief executive officer  Saad Rashid Al-Muhannadi said that the main reasons for the decrease in earnings is primarily attributed to the change in the new terms for fuel supplies to Woqod and its customers, and secondly to the increase in the National Pension Funds contributions as per the current legislation as well as the decline in the value of investment in shares.

Al-Muhannadi mentioned four stations were opened in the first half of the year 2017, eight stations under construction and 14 under tendering and designing stage. In this respect, he also spoke about petrol stations expansion projects, whereas two expansions were completed and three pending completion.

Al-Muhanadi also stated that Woqod is currently coordinating with the Municipality for the allocation of 26 locations for petrol stations construction.

Retail activities include Sidra stores, car wash (manual and automatic), repair workshop, tyres, oil change and other services. Retail sales grew by more than 7 per cent over the same period last year.

LPG sales (refilling and new) during the period grew by 14 per cent. The sale of Metallic cylinders declined to 1.3 million, whereas sale of Shafaf cylinders (6 and 12 Kg) more than doubled and exceeded 3.2 million cylinders as a result of the promotional campaign to replace metallic cylinders with Shafaf cylinders.

As for the bitumen sales, type 60/70 recorded an unprecedented growth of over 168 per cent, and sales of type Polymer PMB increased by more than 14 per cent over the same period last year. Bitumen sales are expected to increase significantly after the completion of the storage expansion project.

Woqod introduced the electronic payment system Woqode in January 2016. The system works through an electronic RFID chip tag fitted in the vehicle’s fuel tank. The number of tags installed during the first half of 2017 reached 20,525 tags, an increase of 12 per cent over the half of 2016.

The total sales volume of petroleum products (Diesel, Gasoline and Jet Fuel) exceeded 4760 million litres with an increase of 5 per cent in the first half of 2017 as compared to the same period last year. Jet fuel accounted for 45 per cent of the total sales volume followed by diesel (29 per cent) and gasoline (26 per cent). – TradeArabia News Service