The Ranking Member on the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament has raised concerns with the National Petroleum Authority’s (NPA) decision to engage other entities to undertake revenue management and assurance in the petroleum downstream sector.
John Jinapor’s remark comes after the NPA in a letter on May 20, invited an entity to a meeting aimed at contracting it to provide supply assurance and management systems in the petroleum downstream sector.
The document points to a meeting scheduled for Thursday, May 23, 2024, inviting selected stakeholders to a presentation by a company named HFILED Limited to update on end-to-end primary supply assurance and management systems.
The letter, which was addressed to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Assistant Commissioner of Petroleum, Customs Division Tema, Bulk Oil Distributors, the Association of Bankers, and others indicates the meeting seeks to provide end-to-end primary supply assurance and management system for the petroleum downstream.
Mr Jinapor has stated that the committee will not countenance such a contract unless the controversies surrounding the Strategic Mobilisation Limited’s (SML) arrangement with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) are resolved.
“We will send a signal to NPA, and our message is simple – don’t try anything funny because we wouldn’t tolerate that, we wouldn’t countenance that. The systems currently are robust enough, if it needs tweaking, in-house can deal with that,” he said.
He said that if the NPA needed a solution, it should be a holistic solution, stressing that “this pocket of isolated attempts to sign last-minute contracts, we will resist them.”
The Ranking member of the Mines and Energy Committee clarified that there are a lot of issues coming up not just in the energy sector.
He said that the committee visited the NPA’s head office and they informed them that the SML contract was a duplication and that their system was robust enough to provide GRA with all the information they required, questioning what has changed.
“So what has changed? All of a sudden, that robust system – are they telling us that it’s no longer robust? Tell the NPA boss that I say don’t.”
Meanwhile, the committee is set to probe into the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) revenue assurance deal.
A KPMG report exposed some infractions including lack of parliamentary and Public Procurement approval among others.
Speaking to JoyNews, Mr Jinapor said the KPMG findings will form the basis of the probe.
“There are more revelations, very damning revelations and so we intend to do immediate engagement. We’re supposed to do it this week, but you know these issues, a lot of scandals keep coming,” he added.
Source: myjoyonline.com
