Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas must be made accountable for its actions to Parliament instead of just to the prime minister, if it ever hopes to get high marks in corporate transparency.

Although Petronas regularly contributes about 40 percent of government revenue, where it earns its money from and who are its true partners is not always clear, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) said in a press statement.

“TI-M opines that Petronas should be answerable to Parliament instead of the prime minister alone, in the interest of greater transparency and good governance, given the fact that Petronas is state-owned,” TI-M said in a note issued by secretary general KM Loi.

“Malaysia’s is a government of the people and therefore, the people would want to know how the money is being spent or where the money is being channeled.”

Although it recently received a fair 6.3/10 rating in terms of transparency in corporate reporting survey (TRAC) by Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI), more improvements are needed, TI’s Malaysian chapter argued.

Former TI-M chief and now Governance and Transparency Minister Paul Low had previously blamed Petronas’ lack of disclosure about its business practices overseas for dragging down Malaysia’s ranking in Revenue Watch Institute’s Resource Governance Index 2013.

This point was brought up again in TI-M’s latest statement.

“It was echoed in this TRAC survey that Petronas could only manage a one percent mark for the country’s reporting covering revenues, capital expenditure and tax payments. Petronas could have won the first place for TRAC this year if it had been more open and exercise greater financial performance transparency.”

TI-M urged Petronas to disclose more about its C$5.2 billion (RM18 billion) purchase of Progress Energy Resources Corp late last year, which made Malaysia, a developing country, the biggest foreign investor in Canada, a developed country.

Petronas then sold a 10-percent stake in the integrated shale gas development and liquefied natural gas project to Japan Petroleum Exploration (JAPEX) but has yet to publicly disclose financial details of the deal. TI-M said that public also wants for more information about Petronas’ recent deals in Uzbekistan and Mozambique.

Petroliam Nasional Berhad, or Petronas, was established with a short piece of legislation dubbed the Petroleum Development Act of 1974 which gave it monopoly rights over all Malaysia’s oil and gas resources. Since then, its oil-derived  profits have been used to finance banks, transportation companies and even a loss-making hospital, other than the Petronas Twin Towers, which is still the tallest twin buildings in the world.

Thirty-eight years after its inception, Petronas has contributed a total of RM732 billion to government coffers, the Dewan Rakyat was told earlier this month.