An overpriced amount of Sixty Six Billion, Six Hundred and Thirty Million, Nine Hundred and Forty Thousand Leones (Le66, 630,940,000) has been shockingly discovered in the purchase of fertilizers by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security under the President Koroma government.

A witness from Audit Service Sierra Leone, while testifying before Justice Bankole Thompson said, the overpricing was discovered during the institution’ audit on the Ministry based on contract documents. He said during examination on fertilizers bought by the Ministry, they looked at the current market price and invoices submitted by the ministry and compared them to that of RCPRC, a project based under the ministry that was equally engaged in the purchase and distribution of fertilizer.

He furthered that, in their analysis, they looked at unit cost, quality, quantity, percentage variations and total of the various fertilizers bought by the ministry; namely: NPK 15-15-15, Urea 4600 and NPK 20-20-20.

He said during the examination process for the year 2014, they discovered that, 10,000 bags of NPK 15-15-15 fertilizer was purchased by the Ministry of Agriculture at Le 546,300 per unit price, while a project RCPRC based under the ministry purchased the same fertilizer at Le175, 000 per unit price.

This, the witness says, gave a variance of Le 371, 300 constituting a percentage variance of 212%. The total variance of the entire transaction, he said was One Billion, Eight Hundred and Fifty Six Thousand Five Hundred Leones (Le1, 856,560,000).

Also in 2016, 100,000 bags of NPK 15-15-15 fertilizer were purchased by the Ministry of Agriculture at a unit price of Le481, 376, 000 while the unit price charged by the project for the same fertilizer was Le160, 000, thus giving a variance of Le 321,376,000 constituting 201% variance.

This, he said also gave a total difference of Thirty Two Billion One Hundred and Thirty Seven Million Six hundred Thousand Leones. In the same year of 2016, the Ministry also purchased 90,000 bags of Urea 4600 fertilizer with a total variance of over Le 28Billion

The grand total variance from all transactions was Sixty Six Billion Six Hundred and Thirty Million Nine Hundred and Forty Thousand Leones.