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SML Ghana’s Digital Petroleum Monitoring System Saves The Country GHC1 Billion

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Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML), Ghana’s-first digital project to watch petroleum products across 16 depots, recorded one billion cedis in revenue.

This helped Government to understand extra money while reducing leakages within the fuel-value chain.

The director, Christian Sottie, chatting with the media in Accra, said in March 2021, when SML started monitoring and auditing, the volumes increased drastically albeit “We were during a COVID-19 era where many factories weren’t operating at full capacity, borders were closed, and other people were home.”

Mr Sottie revealed that SML’s data readings for June to December 2020 matched with those of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) adding “These attest to the very fact that SML’s readings are reliable and will be trusted for the revenue assurance process.”

He added that the deployed non-intrusive system of fixing clamp-on meter on the pipes recorded the quantity of fuel passing through the pipes via ultra-sonic waves, and transmitted the knowledge to the SML data center.

“We do an end-to-end audit of volumes recorded at our data center. When someone touches our clamp-on at any depot nationwide, we get an alarm at the info centre and send our engineers to see immediately”, he added.

Prior to the introduction of SML, leakages were as a result of the diversion of petroleum products for re-export back to the domestic market and also the under-declaration of the volumes lifted for the domestic market.

An analysis of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and data from SML on petrol, LPG and diesel supplies showed a year-on-year disparity within the volumes accounted for.

At the launch of SML in June 2020, Ghana’s minister of finance , Ken Ofori-Atta said the NPA, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and therefore the depots’ independent reconciliation of reported sales of gasoil and gasoline for 2016 to 2018 showed differing figures.

“NPA reported sales of 12.17 billion litres, the GRA record showed 10.65 billion, while the record at the depots was 10.53 billion litres,” the Minister underlined.

He said it had been for such reason that Africa’s first sectorial multi-site integrated monitoring end-to-end Electronic Metering Management System (EMMS) solution deployed and managed by SML, was engaged to offer real-time visibility and transparency to major stakeholders like GRA and Customs.