I’ll prioritize bankable projects in rail dev’t – Joe Ghartey

Minister-designate for Railway Development has said although the Akufo-Addo led administration has enormous infrastructure projects to go into rail development, he will only present bankable projects to the Finance Ministry for consideration.

According to him, he anticipates cash as the main challenge that will confront the re-development of the sector, nonetheless, he said he’s ready to leverage on the right legal framework to deal with this challenge.

Speaking during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Thursday February 2, he said:”“Finance is a major challenge. We have to create the legal institutional framework that will give us the finance. Luckily for us the president is fully committed to this agenda, fully backing it. The Finance Minister is also fully backing this agenda and so we have to be able to present what is called bankable projects to the president so that he gives his blessing so that the Finance Minister takes us forward.”

He added: “For me, the significant thing about it is that the president has added ‘development’ to the name. Every other ministry is responsible for development, aviation is responsible for development in the aviation sector, health is responsible for development. He added ‘development’ because he is serious about the fact that we must get to Paga.”

“…As I said to get to Paga is about $5million and we are looking at a cocktail of BOT and several examples we are looking at. We are also looking, if possible, to give it to different contractors as sections, there are stand-alone sections, for example Tamale-Buipe-Paga is a standalone section, and from Buipe to Techiman is another section and so all these depend on how we manage,” he told the vetting committee Thursday.