Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has indicated that it is essential to investigate the possibilities of public-private partnerships in the future, thereby transferring the responsibility of financing infrastructure development to the private sector.
He stated that this approach would liberate budgetary resources for investment in other areas. Additionally, he emphasized the necessity of exploring new funding mechanisms that capitalize on best practices and local conditions.
He stated in a Facebook post following his address to stakeholders involved in the road infrastructure provision system that this necessitates courageous and innovative thinking.
I am confident that all stakeholders will come up with sustainable solutions to our infrastructure financing gap.
He urged the stakeholders to thoroughly assess the existing financing models for road construction and to investigate potential solutions to address the substantial funding deficit.
Dr. Bawumia recently indicated that Ghana needs $12 billion to address the maintenance backlog and ensure that the approximately 94,203 km network operates at an optimal standard.
Nevertheless, he noted that the current funding levels only meet about 38% of this need, resulting in a considerable shortfall. This deficiency leads to worsening road conditions, higher maintenance expenses, and lost economic prospects.
In his speech at the event, Dr. Bawumia remarked that prior to the elimination of road tolls in Ghana, the government was collecting GHS 70 million annually from this source.
He further noted that if all users had paid the tolls, the government could have accrued GHS 2 billion each year. Consequently, Dr. Bawumia has advocated for the implementation of a comprehensive tolling system as Ghana aims to reinstate the tolling framework.
Tolling right now is designed in many countries, you pay specific tolls at particular points. So you are going on the Tema-Accra motorway, you have a toll booth over there, you go to Kasoa there is a toll booth over there. But my view is that if we are going into tolling we need to think about broad-based tolling.
The current architecture that we have in tolling really turns to exclude even the wealthier part parts of the population. So I live in Cantonments, East Legon, and Ridge which are the high-earned neighborhoods, I will not see a toll, but if I live in Kasoa or somewhere else I am likely to meet a toll on the way. There seems to be an inequity in tolling. I believe that we should look at broad-based tolling.
Why shouldn’t everybody pay? When we put taxes on fuel we look at some modeling on tolling as we were looking at the issue of tolling, we looked at the current toll revenue as before we abolished the tolls, there was about 70 million Ghana Cedis, per year. What if everybody paid, so you put a tax on fuel, for example, 30 pesewas, meaning you move you pay, if you don’t move you don’t pay. If everybody paid you could generate about 2 billion Ghana Cedis a year compared to 70 million. That was the thinking and I think we should be thinking about methods that we could make the tolling more broad-based then we all contribute then the revenue will be much higher. So if you can find a way to do it digitally or whatever.
