The Ministry of Roads and Highways in Ghana says the government will pay $1billion to settle outstanding road construction debts.
This according to the ministry is to enable work to resume on critical cocoa road projects which are left and abandoned by contractors due to non-payment of monies, owed them.
The sector minister, Mr Kwasi Amoako-Atta who was speaking at a four-day strategic management workshop in the Ashanti region made the revelation.
According to him, a joint technical committee from his outfit and COCOBOD, have met and produced a document to reconcile all outstanding cocoa road debts, to facilitate payments.
He, therefore, assured all contractors working on cocoa roads that they will soon be receiving letters for payments from various agency heads, revealing that, “the Ministry of Finance is strictly ensuring that no project commenced without adequate budgetary provision in the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) platform.”
Mr Amoako-Atta indicated that government was poised to accelerating the provision of critical road infrastructure while creating an environment which would attract strategic investment into the sector, as well as preserving the investment which had already been made.
He again said, “Other issues which fell directly within the remit of the Ministry and needed to be addressed systematically included, over-commitment of road budgets by road agencies, poor project preparation, weak site supervision and low-quality work emerging from capability constraints of contractors.”
A lot according to the minister is being done to revamp revenue generation avenues such as road tolls. The Ministry had received approval from the Public Procurement Authority and will this month sign a contract with a local firm to undertake private management of the twenty high-revenue earning toll stations in the country.