The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has embarked on a new drive to boost its petroleum cost recovery department and petroleum revenue department.
The GRA has seen a number of its employees from these departments migrate to oil and gas companies here which have been paying higher salaries.
In an advertisement in yesterday’s Stabroek News, the GRA said that the “unprecedented growth” of the petroleum sector and the resultant expansion of the oil and gas tax roll has conferred additional responsibility on the GRA to ensure that the demands of the oil and gas sector and its taxpayers are adequately met.
The GRA said it is therefore in the process of developing a cadre of professionals. It said that it is seeking to hire talented individuals who would then be trained through partnerships with universities, the International Monetary Fund and GRA’s technical staff.
It invited applications and said that a competency assessment will be administered and the successful applicants would be placed in one of the two departments.
The essential requirements are that applicants must have completed or be actively pursuing the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA), the CPA, COPAs, a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy or any other accounting/auditing qualification with a minimum of two years’ experience.
Persons with qualifications in the oil and gas field will be considered along with those with in-depth knowledge of auditing principles, practices and standards and knowledge of tax acts and regulations administered by the GRA.
Applicants with some knowledge of tax avoidance practices and international tax issues would also be considered as would persons with knowledge of the Petroleum Activities Act and the various agreements signed between the Government of Guyana and the respective contractors for onshore and offshore petroleum blocks.
Integrity, accountability, professionalism, respect-ability and the ability to be team-oriented are attributes being sought in applicants.
Interested applicants are asked to indicate their interest to the Human Resource Management Department with detailed résumés on or before March 15, 2024.
In March 2019, just months before first oil in December that year, the GRA launched an international search for oil and gas experts.
Exciting
“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 the March 7th 2019 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 added.
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 also been placed in 2018.
GRA Commissioner-General Godfrey Statia had been putting together a unit since April of 2018 to deal specially with oil and gas matters and had said that he would seek external support if needed.
Statia, a United States-certified public accountant with decades of experience in valuation and forensic accounting, has said then 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 had said.
Training for members of the new Oil and Gas unit in the GRA began in April of 2018 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 had also been sent to Trinidad for training.
On July 31st last year, Statia, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament that it was losing trained and skilled personnel as oil companies are enticing them away with far higher salaries.
Statia made this disclosure in response to a question posed by government PAC member Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill, about whether there is a deficiency or lack of adequate personnel in place to monitor oil and gas operations offshore. Statia responded, “Minister Edghill, the answer is no, we do not have the full complement of staff. We are working assiduously to get the full complement of staff.”
An increase in salaries was offered to persons functioning in the oil and gas department to remain, but as the organization trains its staff, it loses them. Five staff who were trained within the past year, all in the accounting field, had left, Statia explained.
Some staff trained in the oil industry were snapped up by CNOOC, ExxonMobil’s partner in the Stabroek Block. Statia said the salaries offered by CNOOC far exceed those paid by the tax agency and above the existing GRA officers.
“To the oil industry, a couple of them were actually snapped up by CNOOC. Whereby their salary is actually way more than mine and my officers.” He added that GRA’s increase in salaries did not convince its staff to remain, which has worsened the agency’s situation as it is already experiencing a shortage of staff. At that point, the oil and gas departmental staff complement was below fifty percent (31) and for its effective functioning the department required a full complement of 65 persons. However, most of the shortage of staff is in the Cost Recovery section that is under development.
The Guyana Revenue Authority offers the best salaries within the Public Service, according to the GRA Commissioner-General, and while some of staff work for twice the amount of a normal public servant at the same level this did not prevent them from leaving.
The GRA is a key agency in the assessment of whether expenses claimed by oil companies can be justified.
The country is still awaiting the finalisation of two audit reports into the claimed expenses of ExxonMobil’s subsidiary here. One of these is by IHS which found unsubstantiated claims and the other by RHVE.
