Ghana road fund accrued GH¢265m in 2014

The minister of Roads and Highways, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, has revealed that the revenue for the road sector increased steadily from GH¢24.8million in 2000 to GH¢265.04millon in 2014.

According to the minister, an amount of GH¢322.1 million had been projected to be accrued by the Ghana Road Fund this year to enable it to meet part of the road maintenance budget of the various agencies dependent on it.

Alhaji Fuseini disclosed this in a keynote address at a public forum on: ‘Financing Road Maintenance,’ at Ho last Friday organised by the Ghana Road Fund Board.

The minister said in spite of the achievement in revenue collection, the Ghana Road Fund carried a debt of GH¢230.86 million from 2014 into the current year.

He said since the capacity of the Ghana Road Fund could only sustain 60 per cent of the country’s roads maintenance needs, “about 40 per cent of our road network is being left unattended to yearly”.

To address that problem, he said that government was exploring other financial sources such as the long-term pre-financing of road maintenance works, adding that “another area of financing is the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) and the Maintain, Operate and Transfer (MOT) concepts of Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements.