The opposition party of the West African nation, Ghana, National Democratic Congress (NDC) national communication officer, Sammy Gyamfi has criticised the Sinohydro deal that is instituted to elucidate Ghana’s road infrastructure disputes, as a grand failure.
On 2nd October 2021, during a live event Sammy commented: “The deal was built around a barter arrangement, which will see the government pay for the $2 billion with processed bauxite, however, the country has not been able to fulfil its end of the bargain.”
Gyamfi further added: “The government has been able to access only $100 million dollars for some of the road projects which represent 5% of the total amount.”
“Some of us are not surprised that the much-touted Sinohydro deal has turned out to be a total fiasco. It has turned out so because in the first place it was just propaganda, calculated to prop up the image of the Vice President, to create the impression that he was doing something extraordinary as Vice President when that wasn’t the case,” he said.
The outrage came from the opposition party of Ghana, following a popular local media questioned the government “Where the $2 billion Sinohydro money meant to fix Ghana’s infrastructure needs, is?”
The MoU signed in 2018 between emerging global superpower, China and the fastest growing sub-Saharan nation, Ghana undertakes that Beijing will finance $2 billion worth of rail, road and bridge networks and in exchange, China will be given access to exploit 5% of Ghana’s bauxite reserves.
On November 21, 2018, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Information Minister announced: “The first tranche of $649 million from the $2 billion facilities has been made available for Ghana to access.”
But Gyamfi said: “Three years on, only about $100 million of this amount has been released to Ghana.”
“Meanwhile, many of the projects including the Adenta-Dodowa road which was one of ten lots approved for phase one under the Chinese sponsored Sinohydro deal remains undone.”
Sammy Gyamfi also believes that the present government will not be capable to access 20% of the $2bn earmarked for the Sinohydro deal by 2024.
“The country needs an integrated aluminium industry to process bauxite. However, the government is not only yet to start mining bauxite at the Atewa forest, but we don’t have a refinery to process the bauxite,” Gyamfi explained.
“This is what happens when you have a group of people in government who, specialise in building castles in the air. So I can tell you that they are not even going to get 20% of that $2bn by 2024, because the Chinese are not ‘fools’. They know that you are supposed to pay them with proceeds from your processed bauxite”, Gyamfi concluded by saying.
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