Parliament approves loans

Accra, June 30, GNA- Parliament on Wednesday by 138 votes approved a credit Agreement between Ghana and the International Development Association (IDA) for an amount of 84,976,797 dollars for the financing of the Second Poverty Reduction Support (SPRS).

The House with 134 votes also approved a five-million cedis loan between Ghana and the OPEC Fund for International Development to finance the Accra - Tema Rail line Rehabilitation Project.

The IDA loan would support the education sector towards inequities in access and quality in basic education.

All government-controlled fees and levies would be abolished in 40 deprived districts to remove the financial barrier to access created by fees and levies.

The OPEC facility would fund the rehabilitation and re-opening of the Accra-Tema rail line for passenger train services and would improve mass transportation of the large number of people living in the Accra-Tema metropolitan area and those who travel daily between the twin cities.

It would reduce the use of car and passenger vehicle and therefore reduce congestion, fuel cost, road maintenance cost, vehicle maintenance cost, spate of road accidents as well as increase working hours of commuters between Accra and Tema."

The rehabilitation of the rail line would also be an important step towards the Eastern Railway line and assist in conveying goods from the Tema harbour.

In another development parliament by a 103 votes with 53 abstentions ratified a treaty on the West African Gas Pipeline project for Ghana, Benin, Nigeria and Togo.

The abstention of the Minority was because of the failure to bring together International Project Agreement (IPA) and treaty for joint approval by the house.

Mr. Felix Owusu-Adjapong had earlier told the house that the IPA would be brought for approval later, which did not go down well with the Minority.