Gideon Boako is Spokesperson to the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
• Government says project under the Sinohydro deal will be completed in three years
• The delay, according to Gideon Boako is a result of the Coronavirus pandemic
• Ghana and China signed the deal back in 2018
Spokesperson to the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has hinted that, projects under the Sinohydro agreement are expected to be completed within three years.
The Sinohydro deal seeks to enhance the country’s rail, road and bridge networks and is centered on a barter agreement with the Chinese government. Ghana will in turn repay a US$1.5 billion loan with proceeds from the country’s bauxite resources.
Reacting to assertions made by the minority caucus in Parliament over the deal being a fiasco, the vice president’s spokesperson clarified “Under the agreement, we signed with Sinohydro, we have been given a maximum of three years for the projects to be completed.”
Dr Gideon Boako added that the coronavirus pandemic has adversely resulted in project delays across the country but said government was keen to complete them.
“COVID-19 came and China was the origin of COVID-19. Due to the devastating effects of COVID, things had to slow down,” he stressed.
Touching on timelines for the execution of some projects under the Sinohydro deal, the vice president’s spokesperson said a number of road projects will commence by the end of this year.
He cited the Adentan-Dodowa road, Kumasi Inner-City roads as some projects set to begin soon.
“Work on the Accra-Buipe roads, the Kumasi Inner-City roads, and the Adentan-Dodowa roads and part of the remaining lot under phase 1 that we had financial closure for two months ago will begin by the end of 2021 and end in the first quarter of 2022. There will be activity on those roads pretty soon because we had financial closure on those roads.”
Meanwhile, national communications officer of the National Democratic Congress, Sammy Gyamfi has opined that government’s involvement in signing the Sinohydro deal has proven to be a monumental failure.
Making his submission on the Joy News’ Newsfile segment on October 2, 2021, Sammy Gyamfi described the deal as a fiasco which has not yielded any results.
“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 [Bawumia], to create the impression that he was doing something extraordinary as Vice President when that wasn’t the case,” he said.
The NDC Communications Officer said government has only been able access a mere US$100 million from the deal which has been used for construction of some projects.
Back in 2018, Ghana and China signed an agreement for the Sinohydro deal. As part of the deal, China in exchange for the loan will gain access to 5% of Ghana’s bauxite reserves.