The Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Edudzi Tamakloe, says the deployment of technology since 2020 has helped reduce human interference in the determination and payment of claims under the UPPF to Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs).
Speaking before the Public Accounts Committee on October 19, Mr Tamakloe explained that the technological systems introduced over the period had helped the NPA verify claims more accurately, ensuring that payments made to OMCs reflected eligible transactions and the actual movement of bulk road vehicles transporting petroleum products.
“In 2020, the then chief executive and the board at that time decided that there was a need to introduce technology to help in ensuring that funds are adequately protected,” he told the Committee.
According to him, the adoption of technology has improved the authority’s ability to validate claims and minimise opportunities for human interference in a process that previously depended, in part, on physical verification by personnel.
“The introduction of technology over the period has helped in ensuring that we pay appropriate claims,” he said.
Mr Tamakloe said one of the significant benefits of the technological systems was their ability to establish whether petroleum products transported by bulk road vehicles reached the destinations declared by the companies involved.
Under the previous arrangement, personnel from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) were used to undertake physical verification exercises to establish whether vehicles had reached their stated destinations.
Mr Tamakloe indicated that although the verification process was intended to ensure that claims were legitimate, its reliance on human interaction created opportunities for inconsistencies and possible interference.
“The human interface had the potential of coming out with all kinds of stuff,” he said.
The NPA chief executive suggested that replacing or reducing reliance on such manual checks through technology had helped strengthen the integrity of the process by providing more direct and timely information about vehicle movements.
With digital tracking, he said, the authority could monitor the movement of bulk road vehicles from the point at which a journey began until they arrived at their final destinations.
This, he explained, enabled the NPA to verify claims against recorded movements rather than relying solely on physical checks or information supplied by the parties involved.
He also indicated that the system incorporated a mechanism to regulate or flag tampering, helping the authority monitor the integrity of the tracking process.
Such monitoring is intended to make it more difficult for claims to be processed on the basis of journeys that cannot be substantiated by the available tracking information.
Mr Tamakloe, however, attributed the improvements not to technology alone but also to the work of the authority’s management committee and other personnel involved in administering the fund.
“So together, the deployment of technology, the work of the management committee and others have resulted in the kind of situation that we have now,” he said.
He added that the system provided an essential basis for transactions involving OMCs, stressing that companies could not deal with the authority without being registered on the relevant portal.
“So you cannot, for an OMC, deal without the benefit of being on that,” he said.
The explanation highlighted the importance of the NPA’s digital infrastructure in administering its regulatory responsibilities, monitoring transactions and supporting the verification of claims submitted under the UPPF.
Implications for accountability and fund protection
The UPPF is a mechanism within Ghana’s petroleum pricing framework that supports the application of uniform petroleum prices across the country, helping to address differences in transportation costs between locations.
The verification of transportation activities is therefore important to the administration of claims associated with moving petroleum products from one part of the country to another.
The NPA’s use of technology, as outlined by Mr Tamakloe, is intended to strengthen the checks applied to such claims by providing verifiable information on vehicle movements and transactions.
The system also reduces dependence on manual verification, which can be time-consuming and may expose the process to inconsistencies or undue influence.
For the authority, the ability to monitor vehicles from the beginning to the end of their journeys provides an additional means of checking whether the transportation activities underpinning claims correspond with recorded movements.
The requirement for OMCs to use the NPA’s portal also establishes a common digital framework through which transactions can be monitored, supporting the authority’s oversight of companies operating in the downstream petroleum sector.
However, while Mr Tamakloe said the introduction of technology had helped reduce human interference and improve the accuracy of claims, his remarks did not provide figures on the extent of the reduction, the amount of money saved or the number of claims rejected following the introduction of the systems.
Neither did the account of his remarks establish the precise financial impact of the technology on the fund’s overall performance.
Technology and management reforms credited for current system
Mr Tamakloe’s appearance before the Public Accounts Committee placed the NPA’s technological reforms at the centre of discussions about the verification of claims and the protection of public funds within the petroleum sector.
His account suggested that the changes introduced in 2020 were intended to address weaknesses associated with manual verification while providing the authority with more reliable information for assessing transportation-related claims.
By combining real-time vehicle tracking, transaction monitoring through its enterprise relational database and the work of its management committee, the NPA says it has strengthened the processes used to determine appropriate payments to OMCs.
The requirement for OMCs to be registered on the authority’s portal further ensures that the companies operate within the NPA’s digital regulatory framework.
Mr Tamakloe’s testimony therefore highlighted the authority’s reliance on technology as an important component of its efforts to protect the UPPF, improve accountability and ensure that payments are based on claims that can be properly verified.
The extent to which these measures have translated into measurable financial savings or a quantified reduction in irregular claims, however, remains to be established through further data from the authority.