The Director of Communications for the Bawumia Campaign Team, Dennis Miracles Aboagye, has criticised the latest report by the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), claiming that errors in the document affected some of its conclusions.

According to him, the concerns raised about the report are not intended to discredit SIGA, which he acknowledged has improved the quality of its reports over the years.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, September 5, Mr Aboagye said this was not the first time he had scrutinised a SIGA report, stressing that his criticism was based on a detailed reading of the document.

“This is not the first time we are critiquing the SIGA report. In fact, SIGA has even improved over the years,” he said.

He added that the latest report itself demonstrated some improvement compared with previous publications.

“And indeed, even if you look at this report, you can see much improvement over previous reports. That is your organisation. Nobody is questioning the SIGA report,” he said.

Dispute over errors in the report

Mr Aboagye, however, said his concerns centred on what he described as errors contained in the report, rather than the methodology of using information supplied by state-owned enterprises.

He agreed with Prof. Michael Kpessa-Whyte, the Director General of SIGA, that the Authority could not have simply manufactured the figures used in its analysis.

“SIGA could not have conjured any figure. SIGA is simply analysing reports it has received from these state-owned enterprises,” he said.

He argued that while the underlying figures were sourced from reports submitted by state-owned enterprises, the presentation and analysis of those figures could still contain errors.

The problem is not with your report referring to Prof. Kpessa Whyte. Your report, of course, has its own errors,” Mr Aboagye said.

He claimed to have identified 19 errors in the report, including what he described as inconsistencies in figures, numbers, and tables, as well as misaligned columns.

“In fact, I have read the report. There are 19 mistakes in that report, including contradictions of figures, numbers, tables, misaligned columns,” he said.

According to Mr Aboagye, such errors could have implications for the conclusions drawn from the analysis.

“And you see, the way they report is, when you misalign a column, it will affect your conclusion,” he said.

Calls on Prof. Kpessa-Whyte to consider criticism

Mr Aboagye urged Prof. Whyte to remain calm, stressing that panelists do not simply appear on television to make unsubstantiated claims.

Mr Aboagye maintained that the 19 errors he had identified were not necessarily exhaustive.

“So, if we are going to go into the errors and the mistakes in this report, I have identified 19. There are more. I can list all 19 to you right now,” he said.

He argued that inconsistencies in a report could potentially lead analysts to draw conclusions that were not supported by the underlying data.

“If you pick a report and you want to analyse it, you can make a lot of false conclusions based on some of the things,” he said.

Figures cited inconsistently

Mr Aboagye pointed to what he said were inconsistencies in figures attributed to some state-owned enterprises.

“In some areas, you have YEA being quoted with a figure of 90.6. In another area, it’s 906,” he said.

He claimed similar inconsistencies could be found in different sections of the document.

He also questioned the consistency of some of the profit figures attributed to state-owned enterprises.

“Even in the profit figures, sometimes, you have a different figure somewhere quoted from VRA. Another time, you have another figure quoted from... I have read the report,” he said.

Mr Aboagye described the SIGA document as a relatively straightforward analytical report based on more detailed accounting reports submitted by the state-owned enterprises.

“This is a very basic report. There is nothing complicated about the report. The report is just an insight,” he said.

“It’s an analytics of the proper detailed accounting report. There is nothing complicated about this report. But the fundamental composition should be hard,” he added.

Disagreement over interpretation of SOE performance

“What we are doing now is that when you release the report, your government, Professor White, attempted to put a spin to something that is non-existent,” he said.

According to him, the interpretation created an impression that state-owned enterprises, which he said continued to face fundamental structural challenges, had suddenly overcome those difficulties and become profitable.

“And the spin is that you wanted to create an impression as if in one year, the state-owned enterprises that we know have fundamental structural challenges, which we are expecting that your government will fix, have turned around these challenges. And all of a sudden, you are making profit,” he said.

While Prof. Kpessa-Whyte has defended the figures as being drawn from audited accounts and acknowledged the influence of foreign exchange movements and the wider economic environment, Mr Aboagye argues that errors in the presentation and analysis of the data must also be considered when assessing the report’s conclusions.