Ghana suffers from infrastructural funding deficit
Ghana suffers an infrastructure funding deficit of about US$ 1.5 billion a year, a situation which requires massive investment to address, the President John Dramani Mahama, has said.
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He attributed the shortfall to the rising demands of the public for essential services, as well as rising public sector wages.
President Mahama said this in a statement read on his behalf at the opening of the 2015 International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and its Group of African Member Associations ( GAMA) conference in Accra yesterday.
FIDIC- GAMA conference
The FIDIC- GAMA conference is the biggest networking for consulting engineers in Africa.
It is a forum for consultants, government officials, private investors, construction equipment and material suppliers and other stakeholders in the engineering consultancy industry to exchange ideologies and methodologies for the provision of services in the consulting engineering field.
The four-day conference being hosted by Ghana Consulting Engineers Association (GCEA) is on the theme: “Developing and sustaining Africa’s Infrastructure; promoting intra-regional partnership.”
“Ideally, infrastructure should be financed by the government or public funds in competition with other essential demands of the government consolidated funds,” President Mahama said.
According to him, the consolidated fund was realised mainly through taxation, which at the moment did not adequately cover the predominant informal sector.
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Intervention measure
The government had, therefore, developed two policy responses to address the infrastructural funding deficit, he said.
The policy responses include creating a conducive environment for private sector participation in the provision of public infrastructure through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) policy in infrastructural development.
The other is the establishment of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) financed by the receipts from a Value Added Tax (VAT) levy and contributions from tax which had a funding mechanism already approved by Parliament, through 2.5 per cent of VAT receipt.
The President Mahama said Ghana had a new orientation to refocus on infrastructural development as a key component of national development and the pivotal role of engineers in driving it.
That, he said, was because the economic development and growth of any country was heavily dependent on the country’s ability to design, construct and maintain a very efficient infrastructure.
President Mahama said due to sub-standard quality and workmanship offered by some contractors and their engineering consultants, the government continued to spend resources needed for other developments on redoing works that were meant to last a life time.
“We have these projects littered everywhere and frustrating the efforts of genuine and hardworking professionals in contributing to national development. This is a familiar situation in much of Africa,” President Mahama said.
He , therefore,charged the FIDIC-GAMA conference to address the problem of sub-standard quality, particularly, by re -orienting young professionals.
AMA calls for solution proposals
In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, challenged the 2015 conference to propose feasible solutions to the numerous local infrastructure challenges in the areas of sanitation, housing and transportation, among other sectors.
He charged participants in the conference to ensure that they came out with recommendations to guide infrastructure development in any city under their scope.
Mr Vanderpuije underscored the need for consulting engineers to collaborate in order to effectively contribute to addressing Africa’s infrastructural challenges.
In his welcome address, the Chairman of GCEA, Engineer Kofi Asare-Yeboah, expressed the hope that the 2015 conference would provide the platform to discuss factors inhibiting the growth of the consulting engineering industry in Africa and make proposals for promoting and strengthening inter-regional partnership among consulting engineering firms in the African region.
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For his part, the Chairman of GAMA, Engineer George Sitali , said the scope for infrastructure development in Africa remained very vast adding that the continent was in urgent need of infrastructure such as electricity, water, roads and housing.
“We also know that there are infrastructural needs to be filled. We also know that the financial resources required for this are constrained. It is said that the infrastructural need of the sub-Saharan Africa exceeds US$ 93 billion annually over the next 10 years,” Mr Sitali added.
That figure, he said, suggested a collaborative and concerted effort to address Africa’s infrastructural need.
Writers email Doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh
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