The Achimota-Ofankor Road....

THE report on the back page of the ?Daily Graphic? of Saturday, December 10, 2005, was unequivocal. It read as follows: "The government has secured funding for the reconstruction of the Achimota-Ofankor road.

The 11 million Euro loan is part of an overall 36.5 million euro concessional loan signed between Ghana and Germany in Accra yesterday.

A Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, sign! ed on behalf of Ghana, while the German Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Peter Linder, initiated on behalf of his country.

The Kwame Nkrumah Circle-Achimota stretch as well as the Ofankor-Kumasi stretch are already under construction, leaving the Achimota-Ofankor portion in a limbo". So far, so good. But as readers will recall, the same Achimota-Ofankor road was one of the four projects to be financed under the US$30 million CNTCI loan. According to the CNTCI loan agreement approved by Parliament in April last year, US$142,746,796 of the loan was to be used to finance the "2-lane, dual carriage Achimota-Nsawam road", which includes the Achimota-Ofankor portion.

Following media exposure of the fraudulent nature of the CNTCI loan, the NDC Minority in Parliament moved for a rescission of the loan, but the motion was defeated by the NPP Majority. What that meant therefore is that the CNTCI ! loan is still in existence and is still available for the Achimota-Ofankor road. So why is the Government going for another loan for the same road? But that is not all.

Earlier on December 29, 2003, President John Agyekum Kufuor had cut the sod to mark the beginning of work on the same Achimota-Ofankor road with a Chinese Government interest free loan of US28 million.

This was reported in the ?Ghanaian Times? of Tuesday, December 30, 2003. So who is financing the Achimota-Ofankor road and by how much? Is it the Chinese Government, the CNTCI or the German Government?