…..For unilaterally handing over tax mobilization deal to Indians
Workers of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) are expressing frustration and anger, towards their recently appointed Commissioner-General, Julie Essiam, for unilaterally approving a contentious deal with Tata Consultancy Services and its Ghana-based partners, IPMC.
The agreement, set to take effect in 2026, will transfer control of Ghana’s domestic tax mobilization to the Indian company, although she will not be in office then.
GRA insiders, indicate that Julie Essiam, appointed with the backing of former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, travelled to India alone to sign the contract with Tata.
She subsequently instructed the staff of the Domestic Tax Revenue Department (DTRD) to cooperate with Tata, when they began installing their software. Currently, domestic tax mobilization is managed by a Ghanaian company.
Essiam, finalized the contract with Tata and IPMC, despite previous objections from the former board, the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), and the Central Tender Review Committee (CTRC).
Additionally, Essiam, age 62, has moved all IT contracts from the Support Services Department (SSD) to her office, taking personal oversight ahead of Tata’s takeover.
This decision, comes as the GRA grapples with the aftermath of the Strategic Mobilization Ghana Limited (SML) scandal.
The move to engage Tata was first orchestrated in 2022 under former Commissioner-General Rev. Dr Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah, but got halted in January 2023, due to budgetary constraints and the commendable performance of the current contractor, Axon Information Systems. Axon, has been praised for exceeding revenue targets for three consecutive years at a lower cost compared to other industry players.
Dr Owusu-Amoah’s opposition to the deal, also contributed to his removal and the dissolution of the GRA Board chaired by Dr Antony Oteng Gyasi.
Online portal Techfocus24, reported that Essiam’s actions have not been well received by GRA staff, who view the deal as dubious and against national interests.
They also highlighted that IPMC/Tata’s proposal was the most expensive among the bids, further fueling discontent.
The CTRC, had previously disqualified IPMC/Tata, citing their failure to meet GRA’s requirements and local content tests. Despite this, Essiam, proceeded with the deal, which critics argue compromises Ghana’s tax data security and could lead to preferential treatment for Indian businesses.
It has earlier been reported that, the former Commissioner General, was replaced with Julie Essiam mainly because he stood in the way of that deal when he realized it was not in the national interest.
But the outgoing Akufo-Addo government through the help of Julie Essiam, have finally managed to sign away Ghana’s domestic tax mobilization to Indians.
Note that come 2026, the current government will be out of power, no matter which political party wins the 2024 elections.
So, they have closed a deal through a unilateral approval by Julie Essiam, with a three-edged sword which shortchanges a competent local company handing over the data of Ghanaians to an Indian company on a silver platter, and also poses judgment debt risk for the new government.
Way back on January 3, 2024, the former CG of GRA, Dr. Owusu-Amoah, wrote to IPMC/Tata informing them that the whole process to award a contract for the building of an Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) had been cancelled because of budgetary cuts.
This was after an online news portal, Techfocus24, had initiated investigations into the whole deal and spoken with some key people at GRA, all of whom were opposed to the moves to take the contract from a very competent Ghanaian company called Axon Information Systems, whose ITAS called Ghana Integrated Tax Management and Information System (GITMIS) had been lauded for helping GRA far exceed revenue targets for three years running.
Dr Owusu-Amoah’s abrupt removal from office came together with the complete dissolution of the GRA Board, then led by Dr Oteng Gyasi, who together with his board members, were also opposed to the deal.
Since the dissolution of the GRA Board, there has not been a new board. So, Julie Essiam, has been working on this deal unilaterally, until now when she had single-handedly approved the contract for Tata and their local agents, IPMC, despite the objections of the former board, and the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and the Central Tender Review Committee (CTRC).
Previously when Techfocus24, reached out to several officials at GRA and recently past board members, every one of them passed the buck to the new GRA boss, saying she is the only one who knows what she is doing.
Now some GRA staff, believe that she may have signed the deal for Tata, but getting workers to cooperate will be very hard, as the deal is largely viewed as shady and “not in the national interest.”
It would also appear that, the alleged boastful claims by officials of IPMC/Tata that they will get the deal at all costs, may be true after all, and the person at the centre of this questionable deal, is the IPMC CEO, Amar Deep – an Indian man who Ghana has gifted a soft-landing many years ago. But now, he has elected to pay back the country in this manner.
This ITAS deal and the way it been handled in the past, till now that Julie Essiam has unilaterally dished it on a silver platter to an Indian company, without the blessing of a board, PPA and the CTRC, has been nothing but questionable.
Long before even the former Commissioner General wrote on January 3, 2024, to cancel the deal, he had written way back in August 2023, to inform all 12 candidates who put in bids for the contract that due to budgetary constraints, the bidding process had been cancelled.
Then a month later, in September 2023, on the blind side of 11 candidates, he wrote exclusively to IPMC/Tata to submit their technical and financial proposal for approval.
Meanwhile, before clandestinely writing the September 2023 letter exclusively to IPMC/Tata, the former CG commissioned KPMG to do a further audit of all the 12 bids, and the results for the three top bidders, each of which obtained over 80% score on technical competencies, indicated that the local entity already doing the job, Axon Information System scored highest on financials (value for money) with about US$42 million, while IPMC/Tata scored the lowest because they were the most expensive – US$69.7 million. Atos and Persol Consult was second with US$61 million.
After it came to the attention of the former CG and the then GRA board, that the matter was being investigated by Techfocus24, and it was about to go public, the former CG heeded to the voice of reason and pulled the brakes on the deal. Indeed, he was said to have even written to the government informing them of the challenges with the contract, just like he reportedly did in the case of the controversial SML deal.
But, as it were, the government did not pay attention to the issues he raised and went ahead with its plan to capture domestic tax mobilization from a very competent local company and hand it over to an Indian company, whose solution called ITAx, has been found to be problematic and kicked out of parts of Africa, particularly Rwanda, Zambia, Uganda and Kenya.
Moreover, the Central Tender Review Committee had long disqualified IPMC/Tata from getting the contract becauseIPMC/Tata, among other things, failed to meet up to 80% of GRA’s requirements on deployment experience and also failed the 30% local content test.
This was contained in two separate letters dated January 20, 2023, and another one on March 30, 2023, in which the CTRC upheld its original position in the January letter.
Again, the evidence is there to show that the current vendor – Axon, which is a wholly Ghanaian owned company, is doing a great job by all standards, and GRA officials have testified that Axon’s GITMIS (Ghana Integrated Tax Management and Information System) is at par with any ITAS in the world.
Techfocus24, did a very detailed article about how this whole process began and how it finally led to the replacement of the 62-year-old former CG, with a 61-year-old woman under very strange circumstances, including the complete dissolution of the entire GRA board.
In spite of all the foregoing, the new CG, working under the whims and caprices of some state and private sector actors, have gone ahead and willed Ghana’s domestic tax mobilization to an Indian company with a questionable solution.
Now that Julie Essiam, has unilaterally signed Ghana’s domestic tax mobilization away to Indians, it will be left for the next government, whether an NDC, NPP, New Force, Movement for Change, LPG or whichever it will be, to agree to work with the Indians or allow the Ghanaian company, said to be doing a great job at a much lower cost, to continue their good work.
Indeed, allowing an Indian company to manage domestic tax revenue mobilization in Ghana means more than just revenue collection. It means the data of Ghanaians, particularly taxpayers, which are linked to their Ghana Cards, will be at the disposal of an Indian company. Moreover, there is no telling how that company may manipulate the tax system in favour of its fellow Indian companies in Ghana.
There have been allegations somewhere in Africa, where one Indian IT company helped a very big and popular Indian merchant to evade taxes for a long time until 2014 when the fraud was discovered. But the case did not go far because the state institutions handling the matter, and some politicians with knowledge of the matter allegedly got compromised and allowed the matter to die.
