Video: Senyo Hosi breaks down controversial GRA-SML deal
Finance and economic policy analyst Senyo Hosi has offered a detailed account of the origins and controversies surrounding the Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) deal, describing it as “a very sorry story” and “an embarrassing matter” from a policy standpoint.
According to Hosi, the policy foundation for the SML initiative was built on research he led during his time as Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD).
“The policy case for SML was built on my work. That is the fact,” he stated.
As chief editor of the CBOD’s petroleum industry reports, Hosi said his team conducted extensive analyses to evaluate tax leakages and irregularities within the petroleum sector.
“There was a lot of illegality happening — quality breaches, revenue breaches, distortions in market pricing,” he explained. “Our reports consistently showed a huge negative delta. The first one came out in 2017, comparing performance with 2016, and we presented it several times to the Economic Management Team.”
Hosi revealed that when his team proposed solutions to address the revenue losses, the idea of engaging SML never came up.
“When we were doing our solutions, we didn’t think of SML at all,” he said. “Interestingly, I was even part of the team that edited Ken Ofori-Atta’s speech launching SML. But I am not complicit — this is what happened.”
He recounted how his report revealed that Ghana was losing billions of cedis in petroleum revenue and that these losses could have been easily traced and addressed using data already available at the National Petroleum Authority (NPA).
“The NPA has a data repository that could validate actual transactions. If NPA is paying for ten, GRA should know what it’s supposed to get. That was the logic,” he explained.
Following his presentations to the Economic Management Team, a committee was formed comprising himself, Akore, and then-GRA Commissioner General Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah.
The committee, he said, recommended an audit to establish the true scale of the losses. “EY was appointed, and the audit confirmed that although we had estimated losses at about three or four billion, the real losses were closer to five billion,” Hosi revealed.
He said the next step was to obtain detailed data from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to determine accountability, but the process was derailed.
“All of a sudden, the data got missing at GRA under the excuse of transitioning from GCNet to ICUMS,” he claimed.
Click the Video attached and listen to Senyo Hosi
https://www.youtube.com/embed/B2buS7A3SIU?si=AnpDXTn9UoMMuShX