Christian Sottie
STRATEGIC MOBILISATION Ghana Ltd (SML), Ghana’s first digital project to monitor petroleum products across over 20 depots, recorded one billion cedis in revenue.
This helped government to realize more money while reducing leakages in the fuel-value chain.
General Manager (GM) and Head of Technical Services at SML, Christian Sottie, speaking to the media in Accra, said in June 2020, when SML started monitoring and auditing, the volumes increased drastically even though “We were in a COVID-19 era where many factories were not operating at full capacity, borders were closed, and people were home.”
Mr. Sottie revealed that SML’s data readings for June to December 2020 matched with those of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), adding “These attest to the fact that SML’s readings are reliable and could be depended on for the revenue assurance process.”
He added that the deployed non-intrusive system of fixing clamp-on meter on the pipes recorded the volume of fuel passing through the pipes via ultra-sonic waves, and transmitted the information to SML data centre.
“We do end-to-end audit of volumes recorded here and compare it to the data from the depot. When someone touches our clamp-on at any depot nationwide, we get an alert at the data centre and send our engineers to check immediately,” he added.
The Situation Before
Prior to the introduction of SML, leakages were as a result of the diversion of petroleum products for re-export back to the domestic market and also the under-declaration of the volumes lifted for the domestic market.
An analysis of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and data from SML on petrol, LPG and diesel supplies showed a year-on-year disparity in the volumes accounted for.
Disparity In Figures
At the launch of SML in June 2020, Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta said the NPA, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the depots’ independent reconciliation of reported sales of gasoil and gasoline for 2016 to 2018 showed differing figures.
“NPA reported sales of 12.17 billion litres, the GRA record showed 10.65 billion, while the record at the depots was 10.53 billion litres,” the minister underlined.
He said it was for such reason that Africa’s second end-to-end Electronic Metering Management System (EMMS) solution deployed and managed by SML, was engaged to give real-time visibility and transparency to major stakeholders such as GRA and Customs.
Background
Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) is a wholly-owned Ghanaian company with a strong financial backing of investors with varied business interests in Ghana across different industries. Steered by a governing board, the organisation currently has two main divisions specialising in the Audit of Downstream Petroleum Products and Trade Transaction Pricing and Business Process Audits at its Tema and Osu offices respectively.
Since its inception in 2017, SML has been instrumental in assisting a number of agencies and especially the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to achieve its objectives.
SML is currently offering transactions price audit and assurance services, external price verification services for the Customs Division of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), and also downstream petroleum measurement audit to aid reconciliation and revenue enhancement for GRA.