Parliament adopts $57.3 million loan agreement

Parliament on Tuesday adopted the report on 57.3 million dollar loan agreement between Ghana and the International Development Association (IDA) to finance the second health sector programme support project.

The loan has a repayment period of 30 years, 10 years moratorium, commitment fees of one-half of one percent per annum, which may be waived at the discretion of IDA's Board of Executive Directors.

Three-fourth of one percent service charge per annum is payable on the principal amount of the credit withdrawn and outstanding from time to time. Recommending for the adoption of the report, Eugene Atta Agyepong, Chairman of the Committee on Finance, said the objectives of the project was to improve the health status of the Ghanaian population while reducing the geographical, socio-economic and gender inequality in health delivery.

He said in considering the loan, the committee noted that the health sector was still confronted with challenges including high maternal mortality rate, persistence of communicable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis and newly emerging non-communicable diseases and relatively high levels of death and injury from road traffic accidents.

Atta-Agyepong said the prevalence of three percent in HIV/AIDS infection poses a major threat to health and development and therefore, the Ministry of Health had embarked on the health sector programme project to address these challenges.

He mentioned some of the benefits to be achieved as the reduction of infant mortality rate from 57 to 50 per 1000 live births, under-five mortality rate from 108 to 95 live births, reduce HIV prevalence to 2.6 percent and to increase the cure of tuberculosis from 43 percent to 60 percent. The consequential resolution on the loan was deferred due to low numbers in the House.