Parliament Ties Ghanaian Down With US$513 million Loan for 63 kilometre Road – Election “Chop Chop” Suspected

In a blatant display of recklessness, the Ghanaians Parliament has approved a loan of a whopping €513 million to “upgrade” a 63 kilometre Eastern Corridor Road between Tema and Akosombo.

Whatsup News has acquired the Parliamentary Order Paper Thursday, April 30, 2020, that captured how this the inexplicable loan was approved by Ghanaians legislators.

In the document, the government of Ghana entered three different commercial loan agreements with Another Euros 195.8 million from KfW IPEX-Bank GmbH in Germany and INZAG Germany GmbH for a total of €513 million to simply upgrade a 63-kilometre road.

From IPEX-Bank, Ghana entered into two separate loan agreements; one for some €195.8 million and another €60.3 million. From INZAG, the Ghanaians government agreed on some €256 million. Collectively, these amounts to €513 million which the government claims it will use for “upgrading” a 63-kilometre road.

The calculation works out to a whopping €8.2 million that would be expected to be blown one every one kilometre of the said road network.

Additionally, the government entered into another set of loan agreements totalling US$184 million for completing a small stretch of the same Eastern Corridor Road.

The government entered a medium-term loan facility with Ecobank Development Corporation through Ecobank Ghana Limited for US$95 million and another US$ 89 million from Construtora Andrade Gutierrez Engenharia S.A and Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A for the construction and completion of the Eastern Corridor Road (Lot 1).

Essentially, the entire loan agreement amounts to some US$ 700 million for a road network that has consistently gulped funds from successive government without ever getting completed.

Recently the Auditor-General uncovered massive underhand dealing on the Eastern Corridor Road Project. A peeved Auditor General consequently chastising the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) for negligence that saw Ghana losing some US423.8 million from some previous loan facilities secured for that controversial Eastern Corridor Road.

The entire 696-kilometre (km) Eastern Corridor Road starts from Tema in the Greater Accra Region to Kulungugu in the Bawku municipality in the Upper East Region. The road passes through the Eastern, Volta, Ahafo and North East regions.

Construction of the road began in 2014 and was expected to have been completed in 2016, but that turned into a mirage.

The Akufo Addo administration took over the project afterwards and has now decided to blow a whopping US$700 million on a project that is was 76 per cent complete as at May 2019.

Critics are wondering what would necessitate such a profligate decision to source that amount of foreign commercial loan to finance a virtually completed road network. There are suspicions that 2020 being an election year, the government may be using the loan as a conduit to beef up its election arsenal.