This letter has reference to the lease agreement entered between National Petrochemical Industrial Company (NATPET or the Company) and the Royal Commission dated 2005 for lease of industrial land at Yanbu for the purpose of constructing and operating the Propylene and Polypropylene Plant. In February 2012, the Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA) Board approved a plan for the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (1FRS) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with certain modifications to suit the accounting framework and practices prevalent in the Kingdom. As per the roadmap, listed and unlisted companies shall be required to implement IFRS from January 2017 and January 2018 respectively. Further, National Petrochemicals Industrial Company being a subsidiary of a listed company (Alujain Corporation), has to early adopt IFRS from January 2017.
As part of the IFRS implementation project, the Company has commenced and successfully completed the first phase of the project. i.e., identifying gaps between the current accounting practices followed under SOCPA and how some of these practices would change under the requirements of IFRS. The Company is now formulating a plan to quantify the gaps identified, so that the opening IFRS balance sheet could be drawn up, which is a mandatory requirement for a first time adopter of IFRS. One of impacts identified during the gap assessment was to provide for a site restoration liability with respect to the land leased from Royal commission for carrying out the manufacturing processes at Yanbu. As per the requirements of IFRS, since the land is leased for 35 years and is renewable at the end of 35 years for further periods only upon the mutual consent of the Royal Commission and NATPFT, there is no reasonable certainty that the lease would get extended for further periods as both parties necessarily need to agree for an extension to take place. Further, the tease agreements specifies, that the land shall be returned at the end of the lease period commission). Therefore IFRS requires that a provision is made in the books of accounts for the estimated costs of site (land) restoration in the opening balance sheet. Our manufacturing facility in Yanbu is quite complex and this would need to be dismantled only by experts in that field. Therefore, to get this valuation done is a challenging exercise due to dearth professional valuers, as valuation is only an emerging profession in Saudi Arabia. Further, we do not have in-house expertise to perform this valuation and even if we did, our statutory auditors would not obtain comfort over this valuation.