MMT bus re-branding could have cost under GHC1 million

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General News of Thursday, 17 December 2015

Source: citifmonline.com

MMT Bus TerminalFile photo

An Accra-based advertiser, Casey Amese, believes government massively overpaid for the re-branding of the 116 buses per his professional opinion.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, Mr Amese said the re-branding of the 116 buses could have cost only GHc928,000 instead of the GHc3,649,044 paid by government to the Smarttys Management and Production.

A pro-forma invoice dated 17th July 2015, signed by the Accounts Officer of Smarttys Management and Productions put the total cost of branding for each bus at Ghc30,420.

According to Mr Amese, the unit price for the rebranding of the buses could have cost Ghc8,500 per bus after factoring in the brand concept, nature of work done, color change, and size of the buses.

He further stated the unit price for the re-branding of the buses could even drop from Ghc8,500 per bus to Ghc8,000 cedis per bus owing to the quantity of buses in question and economies of scale.

“For a bus of the nature you’re describing, I would give you 8500 per bus, and if I should look at the volume of the buses that you have, economics would tell you economics of scale so I would have to reduce the unit price for you which I can give you say, 8,000 per bus so for 116 buses we are looking at 928,000 cedis,” he said.

He however considered a situation which could have compelled a company to charge such an amount saying the duration of payment could affect the cost.

“One of the things to taken into consideration is the nature of the client you are dealing with… If you have a client that is likely to pay you 5 months, 6 months after the job is done, you will agree that you are taking a loan to do a job so you would want to make the marker in a way that if the delays for the worst case scenario you can still be able to pay for the loan you would have taken.”

Mr Amese remained adamant the buses should not have cost Ghc31,000 per bus and he is at a loss as to why Smarttys charged such a huge amount.

“In actual fact, if I am doing it, this is how much I would charge you. I don’t know what is going into what the other person is doing and for which reason the person will have to charge 31,000 cedis per unit,” he said.

He concluded by saying, “I would say that, if I was a business man who had 116 buses to brand and an invoice was presented to me for the 3.6 million as you’re saying, I wouldn’t go for that deal.”

Mr. Amese’s assertions are in line with the Citi News’ checks on the market prices for such services, which showed that the prices quoted by Smarttys, have been doubled for most of the services rendered.

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