Plans underway to link Tema Port to Motorway
The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) has awarded a US$400,000 consulting service contract to Messrs Louis Berger SAS, a French company, to study and design an alternate four-lane dual carriageways to link the Tema Port to the motorway.
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The consulting services, which are scheduled to begin in February, 2014, with a report expected to be submitted in July, 2014, will be done in association with Transtech Consult Ghana Limited.
It is expected that dedicated and highly efficient roads and railways would be developed under the programme to facilitate the movement of cargo and people through the Tema Port cluster.
Briefing the media on the project, the acting Director General of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA), Captain James Owusu Koranteng, observed that access to the port had become very critical to its efficient operation.
He said the only two access roads to the Tema Port through the motorway and the Tema General Hospital had become too inadequate to cope with the traffic volumes, hence the need for the expansion projects on the road network.
Captain Koranteng noted that the Louis Berger SAS, in joint consortium with Transtech Consult Ghana, would design an alternate four dual carriageways to link the Tema Port and the motorway.
He said it was the objective of the authority to have the project undertaken with the total expansion of the Tema Port for easy and efficient connectivity.
He said the project, which would include rail network, would have flyovers over the rail crossing at Sakumono and an interchange at the meeting point of the road linking Nungua and Ashaiman on the motorway.
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Bids on expansion
According to Captain Koranteng, the GPHA received seven valid bids on Monday, January 27, 2014 for the proposed expansion of Tema Port.
He recounted that the GPHA International Competitive Tender began in March 2013 with calls for Expression of Interest (EoI), to which 53 internationally recognised bodies and joint venture organisations expressed interest to tender for the expansion works.
Captain Koranteng disclosed that after the evaluation of the Expression of Interest, the GPHA prequalified 21 bidders, including two Ghanaian companies to proceed to the next stage.
He said when bidding opened on Monday, only seven out of the number were received, with bid values from US$489 million to over US$2 billion, depending on the phasing arrangement selected by the bidder.
Phases of expansion
Captain Koranteng explained that the project had five phases, with the phase one requiring the provision of main basic port infrastructure, including the development of five new berths for containers, a multi-purpose berth dedicated to passenger and cruise vessels.
He said phases two, three and four would add up more container terminals and food/fruit terminals to the cluster, while phase five would target the oil rig market along the West African coast.
Captain Koranteng disclosed that the first phase was expected to be completed in a period of two-and-a-half years.