Scandal in waiting as govt plans handover domestic tax collection to an Indian-owned company

Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has resurrected plans to hand over the country’s domestic tax mobilization to an Indian company under the leadership of the newly appointed Commissioner-General, Julie Essiam.

This decision comes after the former Commissioner-General, Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah, halted the process in January 2024 due to financial constraints.

Reports from Techfocus24 suggest that Dr. Owusu-Amoah’s opposition to the deal led to his replacement by Julie Essiam. Allegations suggest that the government, with support from the finance ministry and the new leadership at GRA, is determined to finalize the agreement, despite concerns raised about its national implications.

Of particular concern is the timeline of the deal, which coincides with the upcoming change in government after the 2024 elections. This raises suspicions about the motives behind rushing through an anti-local content agreement that would come into effect under a new administration.

Dr. Owusu-Amoah’s decision to cancel the contract for the Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) was met with resistance, particularly from GRA officials and the dissolved GRA Board, led by Dr. Oteng Gyasi.

Since the emergence of these developments, Techfocus24 has reached out to GRA officials and past board members, all of whom have deferred responsibility to Julie Essiam, suggesting she holds the key to the situation.

There are concerns that the claims made by officials of IPMC/Tata regarding GRA’s inability to intervene may hold merit. At the center of this controversial deal is IPMC CEO, Amar Deep, whose alleged actions raise questions about his loyalty to Ghana.

The technical and financial proposals submitted by IPMC/Tata have been forwarded to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for approval. If approved, this would pave the way for the installation of their systems on GRA’s infrastructure, signaling a transition away from Axon Information Systems by 2025. As of now, the status of the approval remains uncertain.

This is in spite of a number of worrying facts, including the following:

1. The Central Tender Review Committee (CTRC) disqualified IPMC/Tata from getting the contract on the grounds that IPMC/Tata, among other things, failed to meet up to 80% of GRA’s requirements on deployment experience and also failed the 30% local content test.
2. First hand evidence gathered by top officials of GRA from Rwanda, Kenya, Zambia and Uganda indicate that Tata’s ITAx system is very problematic on several levels.
3. The record is there to show that the current vendor – Axon, which is a wholly-Ghanaian-owned company, is doing a great job by all standards, and GRA officials have testified that Axon’s Ghana Integrated Tax Management and Information System (GITMIS) is at par with any ITAS in the world.
4. Before their abrupt dissolution, the board of GRA were opposed to the moves to award the contract to IPMC/Tata.
5. This government would have gone out of office by the time IPMC/Tata’s contract takes effect in 2025.
6. This writer is also reliably informed that the former CG wrote to the presidency and Finance Ministry and stated his objection to the deal with clear reasons.
7. The former CG also wrote to IPMC/Tata in January, informing them that the deal had been CANCELLED due for lack of funds.

But that was not the first time the former CG wrote a letter to say the process had been cancelled. Way back in August 2023, when 12 entities were in the run for the deal, he wrote a letter to all 12 companies telling them the deal was off due to lack of funds.

Then just a month later, in September 2023, the same former CG, wrote exclusively to IPMC/Tata and asked them to submit their technical and financial proposal for the same contract. Clearly, the CG was operating under the whims and caprices of persons in government with vested interest on that occasion.

But when Techfocus24 reached out to GRA staff and Board members, including the former CG and Board Chair, they paid heed to the voice of reason and put the brakes on the whole process, which later culminated in the January 3, 2024 letter, eventually leading to the removal of the former CG and dissolution of the Board.

Techfocus24 did a very detailed article about how this whole process began and how it finally led to the replacement of the 62-year-old former CG, with a 61-year-old woman under very strange circumstances including the complete dissolution of the entire GRA board.

Parliament must intervene

As things stand now, if Parliament does not intervene, Ghana’s domestic tax mobilization and all the critical national data it comes with, will go into the hands of an Indian company that has been kicked out of at least three other African countries.

If the deal goes through under the watch of this outgoing government, and the new government decides to cancel it, the Ghanaian taxpayer will end up paying huge judgement debt to that Indian company. This is exactly what former GRA Board Chair, Dr. Oteng Gyasi alluded to when he said procurement has become the main conduit for corrupt government officials and their cronies in the private sector to loot the national purse.