US$140M SML-GRA Contract ‘Duplicitous’ – ‘Truthful’ NPA Boss Exposes Ofori-Atta

The Chief Executive of the NPA, Dr. Mustapha Hamid has raised grave questions about the potential duplicity of a revenue contract between a private company and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Dr. Hamid, an Islamic religious authority figure who leads a key player in the energy sector revenue generation units of the government of Ghana told The Fourth Estate in an interview how SML Ghana, the controversial company at the center of the scandal could be engaged in something possibly shady.

The government of Ghana is paying SML Ghana over US$140Million every year for “no work done” as officials of SML Ghana could not name s single revenue anomaly they have helped to address.

The company has been accused of being a participant in an elaborate “create loot and share” scheme despite GRA doing all the work alone with its own systems.

According to the NPA CEO, some management members of the NPA had raised concerns about possible duplication of roles when they learned that SML Ghana had been contracted to undertake automatic tank gauging already done by GRA.

Dr. Hamid however disclosed that a meeting had been scheduled with the controversial company to “understand” their work.

“Potentially, we consider it (SML deal) duplicitous” the NPA CEO said of the company created in February 2017 to juice Revenue deal a year or two later.

On whether a company like SML Ghana was needed in the Petroleum revenue tracking system, the NPA CEO says the system is already robust without SML Ghana’s involvement.

“The NPA has a system that tracks the lifting and transportation of fuel products from the depots to the tanks of the oil marketing companies. With that system, the NPA can tell the volumes of petroleum products in all the fuel stations across Ghana at any given time.”

The NPA CEO added that there is an ERDMS installed by the NPA and linked to the GRA’s system which “allows us to disable people from operating or lifting petroleum products once they are found to be in default of whatever statutory margins or taxes or levies that they haven’t lived up to. So, the absence of the ERDMS at that time where things were done manually and so on was perhaps some of the regulatory challenges. But since that system was installed, a lot of that has been stemmed.”

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