Why is the Finance Minister silent on SML contract? – Kwame Jantuah asks
Energy Analyst, Kwame Jantuah, has questioned the silence of the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, over the $100 million contract with Strategic Mobilization Limited (SML).
In an interview on Joy FM’s Top Story on Wednesday, December 20, he said the Finance Ministry should provide full disclosure on the controversial contract to SML after more contradictions emerged in the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) justification.
According to him, the Ministry should clear the air on the development and not the GRA since they awarded the contract to SML.
“Why isn’t the Finance Minister saying anything? Why is he silent?” he quizzed.
“Who gave them the contract? Was it GRA? GRA is party to the contract but the institution that gave them the contract was the Ministry of Finance. All this covering for one another should be dropped,” he stated.
The GRA in a statement on Wednesday, December 20, denied the publication by ‘The Fourth Estate’ that it awarded a ‘questionable’ contract to SML to monitor upstream petroleum production and to audit the value chain of minerals and metal resources.
In a statement, the Authority confirmed that, together with the Ministry of Finance, it signed 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.
It explained that the contract is designed to operate for five years contrary to the 10 years published by the media organization, The Fourth Estate.
But Dr Jantuah holds the view that the deal with SML is wrong since there are regulators such as the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) already performing the same task.
“Do you think that the regulatory bodies –NPA, BOST all those people are sitting doing absolutely nothing? That they are telling us that they brought meters and all that and NPA is sitting and they’ve done absolutely nothing about it?
“Why is that from the word go, if the Ministry of Finance found out that there was a challenge with the taxes and strategies, why didn’t they go to the NPA to ask them?… but they rather brought another company in,” he lamented.
Speaking on the same programme, the Founding Editor-In-Chief of the Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni, questioned the value additions of SML to the upstream petroleum and gold production sectors.
He said “If you ever get to interview any GRA official or any Ministry of Finance official who is defending this answer, just ask the simple question – What value additions is SML bringing to the upstream petroleum sector? What value addition is SML bringing to the gold production sector?”
Read also: https://www.myjoyonline.com/gra-denies-questionable-contract-with-sml-insists-deal-saved-ghana-3bn/
The GRA in a statement said the consolidated contract gives SML more than $100 million a year noting that “by implication, if there is no value addition, SML is not paid.”
But responding to this, Mr Azure said the claim was false.
According to him, per the contract extended by the Finance Ministry, “SML is not going to be paid based on value addition.”
He stated that SML is not expected to add value to the petroleum upstream and gold sectors, adding that it will be paid as long as production takes place.
“The contract says they are going to be paid $0.75 per barrel of the 160,000 barrels of oil Ghana produced, so as long as there is production and as long as SML claims to be monitoring, they are going to take money,” he stated.
“The 160,000 to 170,000 barrels of fuel that is produced every day, SML if they start this project are going to make $120,000 – that is the $0.75 per barrel. If you go to the gold sector, they are going to make 0.75% of gold production that they will claim to monitor. It has nothing to do with value addition,” he added.
Source: Ghana News
