A recent report by KPMG has shed light on the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) failure to effectively monitor and evaluate services provided by Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), leading to partial delivery of service requirements.
The report released by the Communications Director of the Presidency, Eugene Arhin, highlights GRA’s lack of processes to assess the performance of services and hold both its personnel and SML accountable for non-performance.
The investigation found that GRA engaged SML for transaction audit services without obtaining approval from the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) three times between June 2017 and September 2017. Despite the lack of approval, GRA proceeded to engage SML as a subcontractor to West Blue, eventually taking over services from West Blue when their contract ended in December 2018.
Regarding external price verification services, KPMG determined that SML partially delivered on the service requirements.
“This is also partly due to GRA’s lack of instituting monitoring and evaluation processes toassess the performance of the service and hold its personnel and SML accountable for non-performance,” a portion of the statement by President Akufo-Addo on KPMG’s audit report read.
In the downstream petroleum audit services, KPMG, however, found an incremental volume of 1.7 billion litres and an incremental tax revenue of GHS 2.45 billion for the period under review.
The services also included 24/7 electronic real-time monitoring of outflows and partial monitoring of inflows of petroleum products, serving as a deterrent for under-declarations. However, SML had yet to implement the upstream petroleum audit and minerals audit services, areas that could potentially have significant revenue leakages.
KPMG recommended that GRA conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to establish the need for these services.
Below is the full report by President Akufo-Addo
