The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has engaged the services of auditing firm KPMG to do a value for money audit on the controversial $72million Operational Business Suite (OBS) contract at a staggering cost of ¢337,685.

The value for money audit contract was signed on February 2, 2018 between SSNIT and KPMG after restricted tendering process. The job was expected to have been completed on September 17, 2018.

Some four officials of SSNIT including the Director-General Ernest Thompson are currently facing charges of willfully causing financial loss to the state in the procurement of the OBS at $72million to digitize the Trust’s operations—but the software reportedly was not fully functional.

It was discovered last year following the change of government that the Trust settled for the procurement of the OBS software at $72million although it received tenders to undertake the project at much cheaper prices including $9 million

A document on the deal indicates that the eventual winner of the contract bid produced a tender price of $27,610,792 but that was reviewed to 34, 011,914.21 after the General Services Manager of SSNIT identified arithmetic errors in the tender of the eventual winner, Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium.

Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was chosen out of the total of 10 companies and joint venture responded to the tender by the October 19, 2011 deadline.

Perfect Business System’s $34million was almost nine times the amount presented by Persol Systems, about $4million.

Sambus Company Limited presented the second least bid price of $9.8 million.

After the deal between SSNIT and Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was sealed in 2012, the cost of the project increased by about $32million.

The increase was attributed to the procurement of additional equipment including servers and flash drivers and headsets.