Majority refutes BOST Office Complex contract inflation allegations

The majority in Parliament has flatly rejected allegations of contract inflation by government with regards to the construction of a twin-tower office complex for BOST.

The Ranking member on the Mines and Energy Committee, John Jinapor, had accused the current management of Bulk Oil and Transportation of inflating the price of its

Read full articletwin tower office contract.

According to him, the program which cost $39 million budgeted by the previous NDC administration has been increased to a $78 million for the office under the NPP government.

Reacting to this, the MP for Dormaa East Constituency, Paul Apreku Twum-Barimah indicated that these claims are false as there is no agreement as such.

He said the project which was initiated in 2015 was to establish a twin tower office for BOST but when the new board took over, BOST board decided to construct a single tower instead of twin tower due to financial constraints. He also questioned the source of John Jinapor's information.

He said, “…let me set the record straight, in 2015 BOST gave a contract which will cost about 39 million dollars to build an office complex, and in 2016 they made an advance payment of about 18 million dollars to the company. However, PPA came back saying that the contract should not be a single sourcing but rather with restricted sourcing, but the NDC ignored that and went ahead with the project with single sourcing. In 2017 when the new management took over there were allegations that they had inflated cost. So, at a point they needed to halt everything and go over to look for money. Then in August 2020 this value for money audit was completed and they came out with 49 million dollars.

“…In October 2020, the board of director of BOST resolved the that due to financial constraint, BOST could not afford the twin tower office complex, so they decided to do a single block. The negotiated price for the single block was 23 million dollars. In September they applied to the ministry of finance and the ministry of finance gave objection letter.

“So BOST agreed on 23 million dollars as a single project. How can this turn to be a 79 million twin tower? Where is this coming from? If you multiply these two, will it give you 78 million? BOST is just here you can verify.”

“Which document was Jinapor speaking to that it cost 78 million?” he further asked.

He said the former MD of BOST, Awuah Darko rather caused problems for BOST. Problems which this government came to rectify.



NYA/WA