Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. My attention has been drawn to the above claim which was attributed to
the Vice President in his speech at an official event last week. 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 GHC 4.6 billion
of public funds into the proposed switch to interconnect mobile money
transactions is totally false and should be disregarded.
3. For emphasis, BoG did not engage SIBTON SWITCH to provide only an
interoperable platform costing the said amount. The SIBTON SWITCH
solution was a lot broader in scope than the simple interoperability among
TELCOs that was launched by the Vice President.
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turn-key solution project – i.e., all components must be supplied and/or
integrated by the vendor to create a fully tested, working system meeting
our requirements.
7. The project also sought to reduce dependence on cash and paper payment
instruments, as a means of improving the security and operational
efficiency of the overall payment system; reduce operational costs of
processing payment transactions to participants and also introduce new
revenue streams through new payments products and services, such as
mobile direct debit services, mobile direct credit service as well as
electronic bill presentment and payment using mobile payment solutions;
provide convenience, enhanced service offering greater range of services
to bank customers and improving the speed of availability of funds to
end-customers.
9. The total cost of implementing the project and the cost of on-going
support was to be consistent with profitable operation at the volume of
transactions to be processed and with reasonable assumptions about the
acceptable level of fees in the Ghanaian market. This was to ensure that
the system was able to generate enough revenue to recover the
operational cost and also recover the implementation costs within a
reasonable period without hampering Ghana’s financial inclusion agenda.
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10. It was made clear that the successful tenderer would be awarded a
contract to supply, and implement MPSI, including hardware, systems
software, and application software at the tenderer’s own expense, and
own and operate the delivered system. BOG would use the system as a
monitoring tool for payment system oversight. Also, the successful
tenderer would provide the technical training needed for staff of
participating institutions, namely; BOG, banks and mobile money
operators (MMOs) to be able to use and support the MPSI.
12. The bid submitted by SIBTON SWITCH was assessed in line with due
process to be the most responsive and hence the company was awarded
the contract. There were no infractions in the tender process nor any laws
violated. Indeed, an investigation by the Economic and Organized Crime
Office (EOCO) in 2017 did not find any infractions with the procurement
process.
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14. If at all, it is the current government that has actually spent $4 million to
build a simple system that is far less in scope than what was intended to
be built by a private sector operator. Certainly, the amount of $4 million
could not have been financed by the Ghana Interbank Payments and
Settlements Systems Ltd (GHIPSS), because this subsidiary of BoG did
not have the financial resources.
15. I want to remind all that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) is an operationally
independent body, with a clear mandate that has nothing to do with any
political party. Therefore no such comments should draw in the
government of the day, which had no role in the transaction pursuant to
the Bank of Ghana (Amendment) Act 2016, Act 918.