ADB to facilitate Pokuase interchange project

Ghana and the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) on Wednesday signed a loan agreement of $ 83 million for the Accra Urban Transport Project also known as the Pokuase Interchange Project.

The project is estimated to cost $ 94 million and government will contribute a counterpart funding of $ 11 million.

The construction of the three-tier interchange will take three years to complete.

Mrs Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, AfDB’s Resident-Representative, signed for her organisation while Mr Seth Terkper, the Minister of Finance initialed on behalf of Ghana.

The first tier of the interchange will link Accra to Nsawam and is part of the existing Accra-Nsawam-Kumasi Highway.

The middle tier can be used to access Awoshie, Pokuase ACP, Accra and Nsawam while the third tier connects Awoshie to Pokuase ACP.

The construction is aimed at removing the expected bottleneck at the Pokuase junction by preventing streams of traffic conflicting with one another from the Awoshie-Pokuase and Accra-Kumasi roads.

Commenting on the project, Mrs Akin-Olugbade said it was a significant development as it would help ease the heavy traffic congestion on that stretch of the road.

She said the Bank had been a witness to the transformation in the road sector and was committed to partnering government to undertake more such projects.

Mrs Akin-Olugbade expressed the hope that the project would be completed on time and on budget.

Mr Ato Forson, Deputy Minister of Finance, said the construction of the interchange must not be seen as only an investment in roads as it would contribute to man-hours as time spent on the road would drastically be reduced.

Meanwhile, government has also signed three Loan Agreements with Germany, totalling 40 million Euros for the Ghana Audit Service Infrastructure project, Ghana Revenue Authority IT Training Institute and the Pilot Photovoltaic System Project.