Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye, says the Ghana Revenue Authority’s recent letter to the President is merely buying time for the state looting to persist under the SML contract.

The GRA, in a letter to Akufo-Addo, appealed to the President to allow for the running of the Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML-Ghana) system that has been installed to enhance revenue assurance for control purposes.

This was after the President had directed the suspension of the GRA/ SML contract on January 2, and the appointment of an international audit and accounting firm, KPMG, to audit the contract and submit a report in two weeks. 

According to the Commissioner General of the GRA, Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah, suspending the operation of the SML system installed would have ramifications and disruptions on operations.

 “Having carefully reviewed the concern and based on our own understanding of the contracts and the deliverable, we are of the opinion that the system that has been installed to enhance revenue assurance, for control purposes, and also to aid with the ongoing investigation could with your kindest permission be allowed to run,” portions of GRA’s letter said.

However, reacting to this on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Ben Boakye said, “It does appear that only the Commissioner General and the Finance Minister who signed this contract who believe that we’re saving money and not the technical people who are on the ground.”

He noted that the President’s directive for an audit into the contract has not yielded any results as both the auditing firm and the Presidency have been tightlipped about the entire process.

He believes this is another tactic being used to cool down sentiments about the contract till the public moves on to another issues.

“I think at this point we shouldn’t be asking KPMG where they are. I mean the President gave them two weeks that two weeks has elapsed.

“Nobody is telling us where we are with regards to the investigation, it does appear that this whole investigation was just to buy time so that all of us forget about it and then we go on with our business as usual as many have come and gone.

“They’re just waiting to buy time and allow this to persist and that is the inclination I get from this. So these flying letters, communications just buy time while people navigate around how they continue to rob the state from some of these transactions,” he stated.

According to Ben Boakye, apart from Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah failing to disprove the allegations being leveled against the SML deal with facts and figures, he had also failed to appropriately justify his demand for the SML system to continue to operate in his letter to the President.

“So if the Commissioner General writes to the President to tell him that the contract should be allowed to stay, which part of the contract? is it just the monitoring or the downstream? Or you’re talking about a composite contract number delivers three revenue assurance points from gold, upstream and also downstream.

“Is he isolating just the downstream or he’s also saying that the processes that had begun, the contract that has been executed to allow revenue assurance in the gold should also persist?

“That of upstream should also persist when the technical people have raised concerns, genuine concerns and also telling everybody that they were not involved, they couldn’t have been the source of the fear and that Ghana is losing revenue. It’s just coming from the Finance Minister who sat in his office and decided that there’s revenue leakage here, there’s revenue leakage there,” he said.

Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye, has described the Ghana Revenue Authority’s letter to the President as very troubling.

The GRA, in a letter to Akufo-Addo, appealed to the President to allow for the running of the Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML-Ghana) system that has been installed to enhance revenue assurance for control purposes.

This was after the President had directed the suspension of the GRA/ SML contract on January 2, and the appointment of an international audit and accounting firm, KPMG, to audit the contract and submit a report in two weeks. 

According to the Commissioner General of the GRA, Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah, suspending the operation of the SML system installed would have ramifications and disruptions on operations.

 “Having carefully reviewed the concern and based on our own understanding of the contracts and the deliverable, we are of the opinion that the system that has been installed to enhance revenue assurance, for control purposes, and also to aid with the ongoing investigation could with your kindest permission be allowed to run,” portions of GRA’s letter said.

However, reacting to the statement on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Ben Boakye stated that GRA had failed to support their request with ample evidence to prove the alleged consequences of suspending the operation of SML.

 “When the suspension happened, SML welcomed the suspension and communicated that they were going to wait for the investigation to be over. The investigation was to be conducted within the space of two weeks.

“The Commissioner General waited for almost that time to elapse and then writes to the President to essentially tell the President that ‘Mr. President you are the appointing authority, we would only comply even though you’re wrong, we’ll comply as you wish but allow us to continue to run the system’, essentially telling the President that he had wrong judgement on suspending the arrangement until investigations were over and I find that really, really troubling,” he said.

He added that the failure of the GRA to appropriately counter the controversy surrounding the SML contract with facts and figures is rather disappointing and contributes further to the opacity that has characterized government dealings.

“And also to the fact that when the commissioner general writes essentially five paragraphs to tell the president that he should allow the contract to persist, he doesn’t provide any data and justification to tell the president why the president is wrong and he is right. And it feeds into that broad context of lack of accountability for how things happen in this country.

“We have copiously provided data to show that this contract could not have been informed by credible data and capacity and understanding of how the industry works.

“So if the Commissioner General still insists that it is in the interest of Ghana for this contract to persist, what he needs to do is to challenge the data that has been put out, turning the conversation that the public is actually driving and let him know that he and the finance minister along. And it couldn’t have been a genuine intention to save Ghana money and he’s still dancing around the issue.”