The Auditor-General has warned the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) to take steps to secure funding to complete all of its abandoned projects so that costs does not shoot up over time.

The Auditor-General in its 2020 report estimated that projects costing over $9 million had not seen any progress over a period of time, which it said could spike up the cost.

“These stalled projects could also potentially expose the corporation to negative publicity in the media”, the report stated.

Some of the stalled projects includes the renovation of the Petroleum House costing over $ 2 million which remains outstanding since 2015.

There is also the head office project with current carrying balance of GH¢976,673 including GH¢350,000 spent for drafting Contract Document for Tender Process and Evaluation in 2016 which commenced in 2015.

Again, a property complex in Takoradi worth $7,500,000 purchased in 2017 is yet to be completed for use by the corporation.

“As these projects remain uncompleted for several years, the cost to complete them increases over time and the corporation does not derive value from their current state,” the Auditor General stated.

The Auditor-General further revealed that although GNPC recorded a cyber-attack incident during the prior year (2017), no vulnerability and penetration test was performed during the 2018 financial year.

It, therefore, advised the management of GNPC to ensure continuous performance of vulnerability and penetration tests to identify possible loopholes in the internal security network and beef it up the security accordingly.

Source: www.graphic.com.gh