The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is conducting an international search for oil and gas experts as the agency prepares for first oil next year.
“The Guyana Revenue Authority is spearheading an exciting and important phase of its development through enhancing its capacity in the Oil and Gas Sector in Guyana, South America,” an advertisement in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper stated.
“Our aspiration is to reshape, adapt and reorient the GRA’s culture and to prepare our people for smarter and more expanded role as the economy and society grows. We are seeking creative, committed innovative and exceptional professionals who want to be at the sharp end of this new phase in Guyana’s development to join us at the GRA to fill a number of vacant positions,” it adds.
The GRA listed the positions of Manager, RS: 10 level, Senior Tax Auditor, RS: 8 level, and Tax Auditor, RS: 7 level for its Petroleum Revenue Audit, Large Taxpayers Department. Ads for the same posts had been placed last year.
Prospective applicants are directed to the GRA website, www.gra.gov.gy, for details, including job responsibilities.
GRA Commissioner-General Godfrey Statia has been putting together a unit since April of last year to deal specially with oil and gas matters and had said that he would seek external support if needed.
The GRA Commissioner has pledged to ensure that there is no tax evasion by ExxonMobil or any other oil company.
Statia, a United States-certified public accountant with decades of experience in valuation and forensic accounting, has said that his agency would be conducting assessments and audits of oil and gas companies here while noting that evasion is not new to him or Guyana.
“Guyanese taxpayers have been doing that for years. Oil companies have been doing that for years,” he stressed before adding that GRA lacked people with the required training but would be seeking to address this shortcoming.
Asked how the agency would ensure that oil companies do not inflate their expenses to rake in more from cost oil, he said a lot would depend on the information they provide.
“The first thing that you need is that you need to have adequate information flow from Exxon or from any other oil company. Once you have adequate information flow, you cannot wait until the end of the period within which you are going to start an audit… a review should be continuous.
You should have persons on the spot specifically trained in these activities and reviewing the operations on a day by day basis,” Statia said.
Training for members of the new Oil and Gas unit in the GRA began in April of last year and was done with help from the United States and specifically technical assistance from a group of retired US Internal Revenue Service employees. Some staffers have also been sent to Trinidad for training.
The Commissioner-General in 2018 noted that the British government had earmarked the agency for training and made available a grant of £100,000 while Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has indicated that US$2 million will be set aside for training of members of the authority.
The GRA had previously advertised for persons to apply to join the unit but then decided to first train persons within. External hires were still, however, planned for certain technical positions, which would require “persons fully into petroleum audit and petroleum accounting” and possibly a geologist. According to Statia, these persons are to be employed so the unit can hit the ground running once fully constituted.
