Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Godfrey Statia, believes that the staff at the agency must be exposed to advanced training in oil and gas as the South American country prepares for first oil within months.
Currently, training at the agency is being facilitated by the Overseas Technical Assistance (OTA) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), but Statia said, “In my opinion, the training was too basic. There needs to be more advanced training in oil and gas.”
To this end, Statia said he has expressed his concerns to the OTA and they have agreed to ‘fine-tune’ the training material to a more advanced stage. “We have asked them to include petroleum accounting, forensic auditing and so on before they could continue with the more advanced training.”
The GRA has also secured the services of trainers from the United Kingdom (UK) in addition to those from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Some of the staff will also undergo oil and gas training in Trinidad and Tobago.
In a report, compiled by the IMF in 2017, on the oil and gas sector, it had urged the Guyana Government to put systems in place as soon as possible to facilitate effective auditing of all exploration and development costs being racked up by US oil company, ExxonMobil.
It is for this reason that the GRA boss reiterated the importance of the training opportunities being offered to its staff.
