The audit report issued by KPMG on the agreement between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) is an advisory document that guides the president in decision-making, Majority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has said. Afenyo-Markin states that it is not within the right of anyone to demand copies of the report.
“There is no doubt on our minds that the document is for advisory purposes, it is an opinion which opinion is guiding Mr President in decision making. So it is not within the right of anybody to demand much as it is written in law that public documents, for the sake of transparency and good governance be released to the public and members of the public have the right to receive it, it is also a written bonafide of the president,” he said at a press conference in Accra on Friday while responding to calls to the President to release the full report.
Afenyo-Markin also said that the call by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to prosecute persons involved in the award of the contract is baseless. In his view, the NDC has not been following the discussions but is seeking to take political capital out of this issue. It is recalled that in demanding for the position, the National Communications Officer of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi also called for the immediate termination of all the illegal contracts entered into between SML and the GRA.
He also called for the retrieval of all payments made by the government to SML under the “illegal agreements” which they said have occasioned a huge financial loss to the State.
“We are also demanding the immediate publication of the full KPMG investigative report on the dealings between SML and the GRA and the prosecution of all persons involved in the award of illegal contracts and the illegal payments thereof, to SML,” Sammy Gyamfi said at a press conference in Accra on Monday April 29.
But addressing a press conference in Accra on Friday, May 3, Afenyo-Markin said “Now we are aware that our friends in the NDC are calling for certain prosecutions. I think that they have not paid attention to the whole issue and they only want to do politics as usual. Their call is unfounded for the simple reason that there isn’t any established proof of any officer of state causing financial loss to the state. “Indeed what they think are payments to SML are not payments borne out of the government’s revenue.
If you peruse the agreement, SML is paid out of what it generates and they would have to pay attention to the details. They are paid 0.05% per litre of revenue that they generate as a result of the system that they put in place to monitor activities in the petroleum sector.
“And it is instructive to also note that this company opened its doors to the Mines and Energy Committee to inspect and to see the nature of their operations. What I want to urge our colleagues in the opposition is that they should not kill Ghanaian businesses.
“Often under the guise of due diligence and ensuring that there is transparency, we often get out of control and destroy Ghanaian companies, whereas foreign ones who operate in certain sectors get a kind of protection that makes them develop their business but often Ghanaian businesses suffer,” he stated.
By: Laud Nartey
