Sml Rakes In Gh¢1bn Revenue

Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML), a wholly Ghanaian-owned company managed by Ghanaians, has made the difference as Ghana’s-first digital project to monitor petroleum products across 16 depots by recording GH¢1,072,424,786.40 in revenue.

The feat comes from volume increases from PMS (petrol) -Premium Motor Spirit,

LPG – Liquefied petroleum gas and AGO (diesel) – Automotive Gas Oil products, over a ten month period, from June 2020 to March 2021.

The figure comes from the accumulation of GH¢577,689,514.43 with a difference of 401,173,273.91 liters from PMS, GH¢20,275,344.76 with a difference of 21,801,445.98 kilogrammes from LPG, GH¢474, 459 927,21 with a difference of 329,486,060.56 liters from AGO applying supply chain principles in support of sectorial waste minimisation efforts and the Beyond Aid Agenda.

Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), with a strong financial backing of investors with varied business interests in Ghana across different industries and steered by a governing board, 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.

SML, identified as one of many initiatives underway by the Finance Minister to reduce leakages in the sector, 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 the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to achieve its objectives.

Using one of the best monitoring and surveillance system in the world, the project, the brainchild of the Minister of Finance, Mr. Ken Ofori Atta, has thus helped the government to realise more money, while reducing leakages in the fuel-value chain.

The Managing Director, Christian Sottie, speaking to the media in Accra, said in March 2021, 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 meters on the pipes recorded the volume of fuel passing through the pipes via ultra-sonic waves, and transmitted the information to SML’s data centre.

“We do an end-to-end audit of volumes recorded at our data center. When someone touches our clamp-on at any depot nationwide, we get an alarm at the data centre and send our engineers to check immediately,” he added.

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.

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 first sectorial multi-site integrated monitoring 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 the GRA and Customs, hence, the difference in the recorded GH¢1 billion revenue which would have, hitherto, been lost to the government through leakages.

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