The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has refuted the claims made by ‘The Fourth Estate’ that it granted a ‘questionable’ contract to Strategic Mobilization Ghana Limited (SML) for monitoring Upstream Petroleum Production and auditing the value chain of Minerals and Metals Resources.
In an official statement, the authority clarified that, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, it entered into a consolidated contract with SML to monitor and audit the Downstream Petroleum Sector in 2019, Upstream Petroleum Production in 2023, and the Minerals and Metals Resources Value Chain in 2023.
Contrary to the ten years mentioned by ‘The Fourth Estate,’ the GRA emphasized that the contract is designed to operate for five years.
“The new and consolidated contract which is for a term of five years and not ten years as alleged by the publication and was agreed upon based on the performance of SML in monitoring the downstream petroleum sector and the provision of instant reconciliation of real-time data in the sector”, the statement signed by the Communication And Public Affairs Department of the GRA said.
Describing the Performance of the Downstream Petroleum sector under the Assurance Contract, the GRA noted that prior to engaging SML, the authority relied on a manual system for measuring fuel in depots.
The GRA highlighted that using dipsticks for measurement was outdated and presented a risk to officers who had to climb a ladder to measure the fuel in the tankers.
“It was inefficient and prone to revenue leakages. Currently, oil deposited by the Bulk-Oil Distribution Companies in the depots is measured by SML with the aid of sensors installed on the depots (Red flow metres). During offloading from the depots, SML again measures all the various liftings of the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs)”.
The GRA emphasized that all information is captured and reconciled with data from the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS) through the GRA petroleum unit.
The statement clarified that if there are discrepancies, Customs informs the Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) to enter a post-entry to correct any differences.
It highlighted that in the petroleum sector, SML provides additional independent data, apart from the Customs ICUMS data, capable of validating anomalies in quantities imported, discharged, and accounted for by way of taxes.
The GRA further explained that the revenue assurance exercises conducted by EY Ghana and later by the Revenue Assurance and Compliance Enforcement (RACE) of the Ministry of Finance confirmed systemic deficiencies in the accounting and collection of petroleum taxes between 2015 and 2020.
