The Chinese government has denied the government of Ghana a loan request to help the country execute some road projects. The projects include the Accra Outer Ring Road Project (Phase 1), Mankessim-Agona Swedru-Nsawam road re-reconstruction, Dodowa-Kpong and the Somanya Akuse junction road re-construction project.
The Chinese government in a letter to the Ministry of Finance, explained that it turned down the loan request because the projects in question “lack financial benefits.”
The Chinese said after studying the documents for the above projects, they advised the Ghana government “the Chinese Government Concessional Loan and Preferential Buyer Credit are mainly directed towards projects with good financial benefits and repayment abilities.” They further stated that according to relevant documents available to them, the “three-road projects lack of financial benefits, thus it appears that it’s not appropriate to utilize a Chinese concessionary loan to implement these projects. Otherwise it may increase the debt burden of your country.”
They further advised government to consider “other financing resources.” It is however unclear why the Chinese Government turned down the loan request following the tight bilateral ties between the two countries.
Meanwhile, some critics have attributed the cause to the termination of a digital migration contract believed to have initially been awarded to Star Times being which was sponsored by China.
The said contract has since been awarded to KNET, a Ghanaian IT firm. In a related development, the Member of Parliament for OkaiKoi Central, Patrick Boamah in an interview with Citi News, said he believes the refusal of the loan agreement shows that China is punishing Ghana for terminating the contract with Star Times.
“I strongly believe that it has a relationship with that agreement because the Chinese I know, have protested the way that the contract was terminated and I think government must make a statement on that particular project that KNET won and why a Chinese lost out having gone through an open competitive bidding and we will settle matters from there,” he added.
By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
