Petronas Dagangan Bhd has reported a pre-tax loss of RM35.9mil for the 4th quarter ended March 31, 2003, compared with a pre-tax profit of RM66.8mil in the previous corresponding quarter. This is despite revenue rising to RM2.3bil from RM1.9bil previously.
PDagangan attributes the poorer performance to higher acquisition cost of products and the adverse effect of the application of the automatic pricing mechanism in the computation of sales tax or subsidy for regulated petroleum products.