Parliament approves loan facility for Keta Water supply system

The Parliament of Ghana has approved a total of €97.184 million credit facility agreement between the Government of Ghana and the Deutsche Bank, supported by the Italian Export Credit Agency to finance the expansion and rehabilitation of the Keta Water supply system.

The credit facility is made up of a Buyer Credit facility amounting to €84,417,649.82 and a commercial facility of €12.766 million.

Under the terms and conditions of the two facilities, the Buyer Credit Facility has a tenure of 13 years, 10 years repayment period, three years grace period at an interest rate of six months Euribor benchmark + 2 percent per annum.

The Commercial Facility has tenure of five years, four years repayment period, grace period of one year and a-six month Euribor + 4.9percent per annum.

Earlier, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Ofoase-Ayirebi and Minister of Information moved the motion on the floor of the House, which was seconded by Dr Mark Asibey-Yeboah, Chairman of the Finance Committee.

The objective of the project is to rehabilitate and expand the Keta Water supply system to provide access to potable water to the catchment area.

The major components of the project include; the construction of an intake facility with a capacity of 9.3 million gallons per day, construction of 7.7 million gallons conventional water treatment plant, construction of 62km transmission pipeline from Agordome to Keta via Anloga, the construction of a buster station and storage tanks.

The rest of the components are the rehabilitation and extension of the distribution network, approximately 80km of pipes varying from 100mm to 450mm, the supply of 8,000 domestic metres and spare parts as well as the rehabilitation of existing water treatment plant to its installed capacity of 78,200 3/day.

The rationale for the project is that the present Keta Water supply system of Agordome-Sogakope is old and cannot meet the current water demand of about 190,000 people within its catchment area.

The Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources caused an assessment of the Keta Water supply system.

As part of the recommendations, it was suggested that there was the need for a major rehabilitation and expansion of works to be carried out. This would include; rehabilitating the existing water system to its installed capacity and constructing new water systems to help expand production of water to meet growing demand of the catchment area up to the years 2030 and beyond.

The government in pursuit of the recommendations is undertaking the project to rehabilitate and expand the capacity of the Keta Water supply system to be able to supply water to over 422,160 people.