 Regenerating
Roads
Ghana’s road sector has seen tremendous improvement over the years thanks to the World Bank and IMF assisted programs. Until a couple of years ago, the road infrastructure was always in significant arrears and less than 30 per cent of the network saw any maintenance. Government projections are that by 2005, Ghana should have 70 per cent of its network in good state.
"Our vision is to provide a safe, reliable trunk road network system, feeder roads and city roads to allow goods and services to be moved around at minimum cost", said Mr. B.L.T. Sakibu , Chief Executive of the Ghana Highway Authority .
To achieve these, the government in 1995 established a road fund with a main inflow of one dollar fuel levy on every liter. In the first year, the total inflow was 800,000 dollars. By the end of the year it is projected that the fund will collect not less than 1.8 million dollars. The estimated figure for 2002 is between 2.5 million dollars and 3 million dollars. With the fund rising year after year government hopes that road maintenance will no longer be in arrears. "The fund, which is dedicated to road maintenance, can now be used to cover a greater section of our roads. We are now in the position to maintain whatever network we have.", Mr. Sakibu added.
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But in line with government policy the road sector will be privatized to encourage private participation in order to attract capital to improve the entire road network of the country. Mr. Edward Salia, Minister of Roads and Transport , says "government is doing so to encourage the private sector to participate on roads that are deemed tollable or viable. We plan to toll a lot of roads and that will soon be passed by parliament since cabinet has already approved of it.", he said.
The huge investments in the road sector have attracted more than a dozen international road construction firms from around the world. Construction Pioneers (CP), a German company, is one of the leaders to arrive in the country about two decades ago to undertake constructional work on some of the major roads in the country. Together with Taysec Construction, a British firm, the two share among themselves several road projects constructed particularly in the southern part of Ghana and several other areas of the country. |
GHANA
