Procurement Expert, Kobina Ata-Bedu, says the contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority and Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) should not have existed.
According to him, before a vendor is engaged due diligence must be performed to verify if indeed the said company poses the requisite experience and qualification to be able to undertake the role.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on May 25, he said it appears the GRA failed to check all these boxes.
“When you played back the video (documentary) obviously you saw me in there and I had disserted it and concluded that, it should not have been in the first place. Now we have the report, everything is crystal clear that it should not have been,” he said.
Mr Bedu explained that before a vendor is engaged, they must go through the pre-qualification process as specified by the procurement act.
Mr Bedu clarifies that per the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA) act, the services SML was contracted for were considered as Public Practice of Accountancy and must, therefore, hold a license from the ICA.
He stressed that if the GRA had been diligent enough, all these discrepancies would have been identified.
The KPMG report found that SML was incorporated on February 14, 2017 as SMEL. From June to September 2017, the GRA made three unsuccessful attempts to obtain the Public Procurement Authority’s (PPA) approval to single source SMEL to provide transaction audit services.
Subsequently, in November 2017, SMEL changed its name to SML, and in June 2018, SML was appointed as a sub-contractor to West Blue Ghana Limited as a service provider to the GRA and later became the main contractor without PPA approval.
Touching on this, Mr Bedu said SML did not meet the criteria to obtain approval for single-sourcing because there was no urgency of need, and no catastrophic event, which is why they were denied on three occasions.
Additionally, the procurement specialist said once the change of name happened it should have raised concerns as to why the entity changed the name.
He stressed that “GRA on its own should not have sub-contracted through West Blue.”