General News of Monday, 16 July 2018
Source: Myjoyonline.com
2018-07-16
The money was wrongfully paid into the GRA’s account
An amount of $13,518,852.98 which was wrongfully paid into Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) account instead of the Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF), about three years ago, is yet to be transferred into the right account, according to a report by the Public Interest and Accountability (PIAC).
It was reported that Anadarko and PetroSA had wrongfully paid $12,726,739.73 and $761,229 respectively into GRA’s accounts.
These were additional Corporate Income Tax assessments from Anadarko for the period 2011 to 2015 audits and third quarter corporate tax assessment for PetroSA.
But the GRA indicated they have asked the Bank of Ghana (BoG) for the money to be transferred into the PHF. This was after PIAC had raised similar concerns in its 2017 Semi-annual report.
In that report about Springfield E&P’s 2016 Surface Rental arrears, PIAC also revealed that $30,884.25 was wrongfully paid into GRA’s account and is also yet to be transferred into the PHF.
The PHF and by extension, revenue flows to the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) and the Ghana Petroleum Funds (GPFs) are delayed and hence development and interest on the GPFs are also delayed.
The GRA retains a percentage of its collections every year.
However, sources say so as long as these wrongfully paid funds remain in GRA’s account, they benefit from undeserved retained earnings and may explain why the GRA is reluctant in getting the monies off its accounts into the PHF.
Nonetheless, PIAC in its 2017 annual report has among others recommended that the GRA and Petroleum Commission should collaborate more effectively to ensure that surface rentals due the State are accurately assessed and invoiced appropriately.
It further stated that “to forestall wrongful lodgment of surface rentals and other receivables, the Petroleum Commission should ensure that oil companies are properly appraised on the requirements of the PRMA,” while urging GRA to undertake annual tax audits of the Jubilee partners.
The latest PIAC report also stated that a total of 24,346,459.91 barrels of oil was produced from Ghana’s three producing fields – Jubilee, Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) and Sankofa-Gye Nyame (SGN) – from January to June 2017.
This was the highest half-year crude oil production since 2011.
The SGN field achieved first oil in May 2017 with an average production of 8,132 bopd [barrels of oil per day]. The volume of crude oil produced in Ghana since 2010 totalled 218,573,411 bbls as at the end of June 2017.
“Two cargoes each were lifted from Jubilee and TEN, totalling 1,896,737 bbls and 1,992,245 bbls respectively, in the first half of 2017. Closing stock balances at the end of June 2017 for Jubilee and TEN were 1,758,833 bbls and 410,544 bbls [barrels] respectively.”
In the area of gas production, it said the raw gas produced from Jubilee, TEN and SGN Fields in the first half of 2017 totalled 31,673.96 MMScf while a combined gas volume of 11,095.71 MMScf was exported to GNGC.
“A total of 238.39 MMScf of raw gas exported from the TEN Field to GNGC was used as gas export trial after the TEN gas manifold was installed and commissioned.”
The total petroleum revenue paid into the PHF during the period – including interest earned on revenue awaiting distribution in the PHF account- was $272,678,033.62.