PIAC, IFEJ members tour oil-funded projects

Lumping oil revenues and non-oil funding sources to finance infrastructure is inhibiting the effective monitoring and evaluation of such related projects.

Due to the fact that, it is often not readily known the percentage of the project that is financed with oil revenues, those in charge of ensuring the prudent use of the resources are often handicapped in using the physical projects to determine whether revenues were used prudently or not.

In most instances, beneficiaries of the project are only conversant with the fact that the projects are financed with consolidated funds from different sources - and therefore have no knowledge of the fact that oil revenues have been allocated for their ultimate benefit.

This issue of consolidated funding, which had been encountered during similar tours of oil-funded projects, came to light again when a team comprising members of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) – the committee with oversight responsibility over the prudent management of petroleum revenues – and the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) toured some projects in the Ketu North District in the Volta Region.

For instance, the bitumen surfacing of a 21.4-kilometre Tadzevu- Devego- Agorve Junction feeder road is said to have received over GHC10 million from petroleum revenues in 2016, but  information from the feeder roads in the region showed that a total of about GHC24.7 million had been certified for the project which was yet to be completed. The total amount is about 77 per cent of the total cost of the project. 

The Operations Manager of the Feeder Roads, Volta Region, Mr Edward Asenso, told the team he could not tell the portion of the certified amount that came from oil revenues as the funding source for the project was labelled as consolidated funding.

PIAC to do better

The Vice Chairman of PIAC, Mr Kwame Jantuah, who alluded to the challenge associated with not being clear on funding source prior to the monitoring exercise, gave the assurance that the committee would ensure that it identified other funding sources prior to any subsequent validation exercise.

“I think what we should do right now is to be able to, before we set out, find out how much money and where the funding comes from with regards to some of these projects. We need to find out the non-oil source before we come down to actually do the validation.”

“I think going forward, we will try and identify what the other funding source has been, because even some of the people are not aware that oil money has been used for some of the projects,” he said in an interview on August 2.

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State of project

The physical progress of the 21.4-kilometre Tadzevu- Devego- Agorve Junction feeder road when the team visited on August 1 was about 80 per cent complete. The first primer seal for the road had been completed although portions were already coming off.

There were also some variations made to the project which had extended the completion date from October 2015 to October 2017.

Variations to the project include the bitumen surfacing of Tadzewu town roads, Ho Community Nurses Training Compound, Anfoega- Gblenkor, Awate Town Roads and construction of a 2 4 by 3 reinforced box culvert on Dove-jn-Dove- Aveyime feeder road. While some had been completed, the road projects were at the primer seal level.

Mr Asenso, however, explained that work was ongoing on the other variations although yet to be completed.