Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has said that the government set aside at least 2 billion U.S. dollars to self-finance the construction of a 198.7-km expressway between Accra, the national capital, and Kumasi, the country’s second-largest city.
Mahama said on Monday at Ejisu, near Kumasi, during the formal handover of the expressway’s cleared right-of-way by the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), that the funds now set aside in a special Bank of Ghana account were not borrowed but came from the country’s own revenue sources.
“We have not gone to borrow money from anywhere. This money is the taxpayers’ money,” the president said.
When completed, Mahama said the six-lane expressway, designed for speeds of up to 120 km per hour, would reduce travel time between the two cities to about two hours, from the current five to six hours.
He directed the minister for roads and highways to incorporate the GAF Engineers Regiment as a major subcontractor to the main contractor for the expressway project.
The handover marked the completion of a major preparatory phase of the project, as GAF personnel spent 19 weeks completing the right-of-way clearing to make way for construction.
The proposed self-financing of the Accra-Kumasi expressway represents a significant shift from Ghana’s traditional funding model for major infrastructure projects, which typically involved borrowing from foreign capital markets and relying on unplanned domestic funding.
This approach often left major projects incomplete, necessitating substantial borrowing from both domestic and foreign bond markets to finish them, along with the associated cost overruns.
