Before the elimination of road tolls in Ghana, the government was collecting GHS 70 million annually, as stated by Vice President Dr. Bawumia.
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 tolls.
He made these remarks during a High-Level discussion on Roads held in Accra on Wednesday, August 7.
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 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 were about 70 million Ghana Cedis, per year. What if everybody paid, so you put a fuel tax, 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.
The government is preparing to reinstate road tolls following their suspension in 2021. Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam announced that the Cabinet has sanctioned a framework designed to facilitate the reintroduction of these tolls in 2025.
This announcement was made during the mid-year budget review presented in Parliament on Tuesday, July 23. The government had previously abolished road toll collections in 2021, citing the introduction of the e-levy as a replacement for the tolls.
However, the e-levy has not met expectations, leading the government to plan for the return of road tolls in 2025.
