A vice president of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has asserted that the revenue assurance contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML) was an upgrade of the botched Agyapa Royalties deal.
According to Simons, after the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government failed to implement the Agyapa deal, which sought to collateralise Ghana’s mineral resources, it expanded the SML deal which was originally for revenue assurance for oil production to include minerals, myjoyonline.com reports.
The IMANI vice president, who is reported to have made these claims during a detailed presentation on the job expectation of SML on Joy FM’s Newsfile programme on April 27, 2024, said that the company was tasked by the government to expand its service to Ghana’s mineral production even though the contract was questionable.
‘We are completely certain that when you try to expand this SML service to cover the minerals and petroleum it was simply Agyapa [deal] in suit and tie.
‘When Agy
apa failed, somebody suggested that if we cannot get the percentage of the royalties that we wanted from every ounce of gold sold in Ghana, then we will do even more, we will add the oil as well and we will create a mechanism to get a certain percentage out of that,’ he is quoted to have said.
Simons said that the SML deal had a lot of irregularities including the feasibility of accurately determining oil production and calculating royalties, particularly, in light of concerns about the reliability of data provided by oil companies.
He slammed the GRA for relying on mechanisms to establish royalty payments, highlighting the inherent challenges associated with monitoring and regulating the extraction and sale of petroleum.
“It doesn’t make any sense to try and claim that because the Tullow and other companies are lying about the oil produced, you will use some mechanism to try and establish that.
“And for every barrel of oil produced, you will then be entitled to a percentage. What logic is that?’ he quizz
ed.
Source: Ghana Web