'Procurement Act was invoked in Subah contract'

Mr George Blankson, the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), says due process and procedure pertaining to the Procurement Act were compiled when GRA awarded the contract to Subah Info Solutions.

He said the total amount of money paid to Subah Info Solution since its operation for GRA from May 2010 to August 2012 stood at 74, 356,240 million and not GH C144 million as reported in the media.


Addressing the media in Accra, he said an examination conducted by the National Communication Authority on Subah showed that the company had the technical expertise and equipment for carrying out the task required of it by GRA.


Subah Info Solutions Ltd was contracted by the Ghana Revenue Authority in May 2010 to monitor and verify the volume of calls generated by telecommunication companies for tax purposes for a five year period (May 2010 to June 2015). The IT company was to be paid GHC4 million monthly, totaling Ghc144 million for about three years.


The payment has raised a lot of concerns about how monies belonging to the state are spent.


Mr Blankson said Subah Info Solutions was contracted to perform two main functions namely: to ascertain the veracity of total volume of traffic (minutes of call) declared by the telcos and also verify the correct application of tariffs to the individual calls (whether a cal attract, for example, 8 pesewas per minute or 0 pesewas per minute).

“However, the telecommunication companies did not allow Subah to physically connect its equipment to their network nodes citing the risk of Subah listening in to the conversations and messages of their customers”, he added.


He said the refusal by the telecommunications companies made the work of Subah Info Solutions very difficult making it unable to perform well on the two functions.


Mr Blankson said by the terms of the contract, Subah was paid 13.5% of the incremental revenue of the monthly collection of VAT and Communication Service Tax (CST) revenue received from the telcos at the commencement of contract.


He said upon a review of the CST Act 2013, Subah would now be able physically access the network nodes of the service providers in order to properly perform its function.