Gov’t Handing Over Kotoka to Turkish Because of US$ 40 million Runway Repairs

The Minister of Aviation, Joseph Kofi Adda, has admitted albeit unwillingly that the Akufo Addo administration is ready to hand over the Kotoka International Airport to Turkish companies because the government needs US$40 million to renovate the airport’s runway.

The Ghanaian government had recently used pubic funds approximated at US$ 300 million to renovate KIA. Yet, that investment did not require Ghana’s main international airport to be handed over to foreign companies.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, Mr. Adda “The runway has to be redone. It has been thirty years and nothing has been done. They need to redo it. The last time I heard they did some work to get the tar out of it, there was a huge stuck of that. It needs to be redone. Now we need about forty million dollars to do the work. With this debt now, they cannot even do that. Is it something we can push the new company to do? We are not sure. There are a whole lot of options we can look at,” he said.

The “new company” Mr. Adda was referring to is the Turkish consortium TAV-SUMM to whom the Akufo Addo government is frantically trying to cover up the fact that it has already granted an executive approval for a “Strategic Partnership”.

Workers of the Ghana Airport Company last week caught wind of the hushed-up deal and mounted a spirited protest against the deal, saying there was absolutely no reason for the Ghanaian government to be handing over its most strategic airport to foreigners.

In the head of the protest, the Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL) was forced to issue a statement attempting to cover up the done deal.

In the statement, the GACL claimed that the planned sale to the Turkish is only a proposal yet to be considered.

“The Managing Director of GACL, Mr. Yaw Kwakwa, confirmed receipt of a proposal for partnership from TAV-SUMMA which was yet to be considered. He assured the Divisional Union that they would be consulted when the process begins,” the GACL statement read.

“The Chairperson of GACL, Madam Oboshie Sai Cofie in an interview with Daily Graphic on July 3, 2020, said the Board had received the proposal but that no discussion had started”

However, Whatsup News can report that the government has already granted executive approval to the deal. It is unclear if the Ghanaian Parliament approved the deal.

The executive approval referenced OPS18210L.9/20/2, dated March 24, 2020, and signed by Nana Asante Bediatuo, the Executive Secretary of the President read: “The President has granted executive approval for the Ministry of Aviation to facilitate the engagement of TAV-SUMMA Consortium as strategic partners to the Ghana Airports Company Limited for the improvement of service delivery and expansion of infrastructure at the Kotoka International Airport.”

This official approval flies in the face of the denials by the GACL, the GACL Chairperson Oboshie Sai Cofie and the Minister of Aviation Joseph Kofi Adda.

Earlier, in April 2019, a leaked cabinet memorandum showed that TAV Airport Holding Company Limited was primed to take over the management of The GACL in what would have basically rendered the senior management and staff of the state airport company useless.

Meanwhile, in 2019, when the leaked privatisation memorandum was leaked, workers of GACL had protested saying: “…We can state for a fact that the new Terminal 3 building, which is an envy of all especially our neighbouring sub-Saharan African countries was built and funded solely on the balance sheet of the company without any sovereign guarantee,” a statement from the peeved GACL staff read.