Honorary Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Bright Simons, has asked the government to make public, the full report presented by KPMG on its audit of the contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML).
The presidency, in a Wednesday, April 24, 2024 release highlighted the findings of the report, KPMG’s recommendations and the President’s directives to the GRA and Ministry of Finance based on what was recommended in the document.
Despite the gains made by the state in revenue and volumes of oil due to the Company’s audit in the downstream sector according to the findings, the report recommended that the contract be renegotiated and other aspects re-looked before further measures can be taken.
Following the revelations, Bright Simons thinks the portions of the report lauding the SML for contributing to an increased revenue is not factual.
In a write-up on his social media, he commended the President’s appreciation of certain infractions in the contract and accepting certain recommendations made, but insisted on certain inaccuracies which require clarification.
“It is helpful that the President of Ghana accepts that infractions occurred in the award of the SML contracts, that have so far netted the company more than 1 BILLION GHS. It was inevitable that the attempt to extend this same troubling arrangement to the mining & petroleum drilling sectors for an additional US$100 million a year would not stand scrutiny, so the decision to halt that process was expected. As is also widely known, the pre-shipment inspection work SML took from West Blue and was being paid for was a duplication of existing services. The President has finally come to that same conclusion,” he said Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
“The Presidency’s “whitepaper” also acknowledges that substantial work must be done to determine the country’s needs before the award of any contracts for revenue assurance in the “downstream” fuel market (especially the linkages between the wholesale depots and fuel retail outlets). And it is a no-brainer that if any company is to render any service in this area at all, then they must receive a fixed fee and not be paid percentages of taxes collected by the State, which was the case in the now suspended SML contract,” he added.
Bright Simons, however, demanded that the entire report be put in the public domain to give clarification to certain allusions made to SML in terms of revenue and volumes of oil appreciation which he says, are not true.
“However, we are seriously disappointed by a number of elements of the President’s “whitepaper”. We insist on seeing the full KPMG report. We dispute their apparent claim that any increase in petroleum consumption in Ghana should be attributed to SML. We demand an open forum to show that the weight of expert opinion in Ghana is against any such flawed reasoning,” he added.
