By William
Yaw Owusu
Tuesday May
15, 2018
There is raging debate over the GH¢4.6 billion the erstwhile
Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government was to spend on the
establishment of a national switch to make mobile money payments and other
transfers interoperable (i.e. link to one another) in the banking and the
financial systems.
Luck eluded the NDC when it was booted out of office
in the 2016 general election; but the successor Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic
Party (NPP) government has been able to complete the same project with only
GH¢18.4 million, according to Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
Contract
Terms
The Mahama government had fixed the cost of
integrating the mobile money platforms of Ghanaian telecommunication companies with
the national payments switch (GHIPPS) at over $1 billion (GH¢4.6 billion) - which
translates into about 15% of the national budget.
The contract was awarded by the Bank of Ghana (BoG)
on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) basis to Sibton Switch Systems Limited -
an entity which sources say had no track-record in payments anywhere.
Roland Agambire of rLG fame is said to have fronted
for the company.
Under the project, Sibton was to raise the funds and
develop the project and earn a percentage of fees over a 25-year period to
cover the over $1 billion price tag plus return on investment.
However, the price for a simple gateway and ledger
for a few billing engines at over $1.2 billion has been described by many as
one of the ‘craziest, most ridiculous scams hatched’ on the government of Ghana
by some experts.
NDC’s
Silence
So far there has not been any official denial or otherwise
either from the office of former President John Mahama - under whose tenure the contract was signed - or
the NDC as a political party, which was in government at the time.
The former president’s trusted aide, Stan Dogbe, was
the only person who went on social media to justify the claim that the amount
used by the NPP was only a component since the whole project initiated by the
NDC was in four different phases.
Fake
Alerts
In the ensuing heat, some opposition party activists,
including some former government officials, circulated a statement ‘setting the
records straight’ about the contract purporting to be coming from Dr Nashiru
Issahaku, former Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), under whose tenure the
contract was signed.
The statement had created the impression that Dr. Issahaku
was condemning Vice President Dr. Bawumia for exposing the corruption in the
deal signed by the bank.
The apparently cooked statement quoted the former
Governor as saying, “I wish to categorically state that the claim that the Bank
of Ghana (BoG), under the previous NDC regime, was to commit an amount of
GH¢4.6 billion of public funds into the proposed switch to interconnect mobile
money transactions is totally false and should be disregarded.”
However, Joy
FM yesterday quoted a source close to Dr Issahaku as saying that the
statement did not come from the former Governor.
It rather came from some operatives of the major
opposition party (NDC).
NPP
Vs NDC
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a member of the NPP, posted
on Facebook, “Why are we quiet on things like this? Just before President
Mahama left office, Ghana signed a contract to pay a company sponsored by
Roland Agambire, $1.2 billion for providing a service which the Akufo-Addo
government, with negotiations led by the Vice President, has made sure it will
be done at merely $4.5 million. Yes! You heard me right! Just a tiny fraction
of what the NDC was prepared to get the same thing done at.
“You and I
would have paid for such gross disregard for the public purse. Please! The NPP
and the NDC are not the same!
They cannot be. That is not to say, one is manned
by angels and the other by something else. No! There are good and bad nuts in
both. But, most importantly, it is about the integrity, foresight, competence
and substance of those who lead. One government was prepared to pay ‘contractors’
5.6 billion or so Ghana Cedis for work supposedly done that cannot be verified.
The other government, after taking office, stopped it! Don’t be fooled. Ghana
is on track.”
Mahama
Boy
Stan Dogbe also reacted, “The project was owned by
the Bank of Ghana and was to be implemented without public funds, but with enormous
benefit to us, financial consumers, the firms and the economy. There was no contract sum, or payment of
$4.6bn (other times told GH¢4.6bn) to be made to any company for the project.”
He said further, “We are told, now, that Bawumia (Vice
President) has taken over the project and executed it for $4m.
Which obviously
means that it is no longer a BoG project and public funds of $4m has been
committed to this. Bawumia and his copy copy party boys are telling us that the
completed project is Phase 1, and which amounted to the $4m. What they have not
told you is how much phase 2 and phase 3 and probably phase 4 is going to cost.
Who were the beneficiaries of this $4m and how were they sourced and how much
exactly were they paid?”
Sibton’s
Initial Response
In February 2017 – in the heat of the transition –
Sibton Switch Systems vehemently defended the GH¢4.6 billion cost for the
establishment of an interoperable platform.
The company insisted that the quality and extent of
services provided by the platform guaranteed its selection by the central bank.
“It’s a long term infrastructure; it’s a retail
payment system that does not just cover one party; it will be interoperability
for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). It cuts across the entire retail payment
systems; it comes with MNOs, banks, aggregators, merchants, among others,” an
official of Sibton Switch Systems, Keiko Wantanabe, had explained on Citi
FM.
She added, “If we believe that this amount is what
is going to get us this infrastructure, then we’re investing this amount into
it.”
Indeed, Citi
Fm had petitioned Vice President Bawumia over the outrageous cost of the
project when the NPP took over power, leading to a cancellation of the
contract.
The company had been selected from three
institutions that put in bids; the value of Sibton’s bid was
GH¢4,669,414,340.82, deemed relatively higher than two other bidding
competitors – Vals Intel Limited and Mericom Solutions Limited – which quoted
GH¢14 million and GH¢5.5 million respectively.
The contract to Sibton was seen by many industry
experts as unnecessary and shady, hence the petition to the vice president.
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