Guyana has less than two months left to audit USD 460M pre-contract costs
Since the announcement that Guyana would have to pay ExxonMobil a whopping USD 460M in pre-contract costs up to December 31, 2015, the Government has made no move to ascertain whether this figure is inflated or not.
This is in spite of the fact that the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) Government has with Exxon specifically states that it has a two-year deadline to do cost audits. In fact, the Government’s deadline is October 7, 2018 – less than two months away. In spite of the relatively short deadline, there have been no advertisements in the local newspapers or online media sites for External Auditors. The Office of the Auditor General, which is the country’s official and constitutional auditor, has not been approached to render its services. Local Chartered Accountants with professional training in audits have not been asked to lend a helping hand. Indeed, the Government has not done even the most cursory attempt to comb through its systems to determine whether there is a single person capable of auditing the figures. Taking these factors into consideration, local critics believe that the government has displayed a nonchalant attitude towards auditing the controversial figure. In fact, some critics have asked whether the government is interested at all in ensuring that Guyana is not paying more than it should. Giving assurances yesterday that the government indeed cares about this matter was Minister of State, Joseph Harmon. At his postCabinet press briefing, the Cabinet Secretary said, “Minister (of Finance) Jordan did publicly state that we have a capacity issue which we acknowledge, we accept that. But that apart, we are in fact… we just set up the Department of Energy and we are in fact looking at these matters, because you know there is a timeline within which these matters have to be done before first oil.”Harmon continued, “We are aware of some local capacity, we are aware that there is some capacity in the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). You recognized also in one of my statements earlier that the Commissioner-General of GRA, Godfrey Statia, will be attending a forum in the United Kingdom to deal with these issues. Also, you would have heard me speak about a sum of US$1.6M dedicated towards oil and gas capacity building.”
The Cabinet Secretary added, “Whether it (our behaviour or approach on the matter) is aggressive or not, I don’t know, you have your own benchmark. But at the level of government, we are looking at this very carefully…We are concerned about these matters, we take them seriously. It is not that it is not being done aggressively, but we are looking at it in a systematic way.”
(Kaieteurnews)