Alan Kyeremanten’s Devaluation Of Komenda Sugar Factory Hamstrings Vetting

Two former officials of the Trade Ministry have petitioned the Appointments Committee of Parliament to reject the re-nomination of Mr. Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten as the Minister of Trade.

In a petition to the Chairman of the Appointments Committee, Ransford Chatman Vanni-Amoah, former Secretary to the Komenda sugar project management board and Alhaji Mohammed Naziru, former special assistant to the minister of Trade, raised issues with the shadiness around the devaluation of the Komenda Sugar Factory during Kyeremanten’s first tenure as Minister.

They point out that in October 2016, when the Mahama government was at the helm, the factory had been valued at over US$34million by its Transaction Advisor, PwC. However, just 11 months after the NPP had taken over, Kyeremanten released a valuation report that reduced the value of the same factory to US$12million.

They demanded to know the cause of such meteoric depreciation in the factory’s value by more than US$20million in less than a year, questioning the source of the valuation report and whether the Transaction Advisor, PwC had anything to do with the Kyeremanten report.

“If the value of the plant and machinery could depreciate beyond 65% in 2017, what would be the value in 2020?” “Was it a deliberate scheme by the PwC and the Ministry of Trade and Industry to run down the company to reduce its value?” they questioned.

The petitioners pointed out that before the strange devaluation, Alan Kyeremanten and his deputies at the Trade Ministry had started rundown propaganda against the factory to make it seem a thing of very little value.

It started on Thursday, 10th August 2017, with the vetting of Kyeremanten’s deputy, Robert Ahomka Lindsay. In response to a question from the MP for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem, Hon. Samuel Atta Mills, on the state of the Komenda Factory which the Mahama government had built, Ahomka Lindsay had claimed the factory had been conceived and implemented in error.

According to him, the sugar that Atta Mills said he had tasted from the factory had not been processed by the factory and that the Mahama government had imported semi-processed sugar from abroad to be bagged in Ghana.

Mr. Ahomka Lindsay also claimed that since the setup of the factory, not a single cane of sugar had been put through it.

Responding to what they called the Kyeremanten Ministry of Trade’s propaganda against the factory, the petitioners said the Komenda Sugar factory produced sugar during the test run season and that the former minister must provide documents to prove that the previous government purchased semi-processed sugar as his Ministry claimed.