Revenue accruing to the road sector increased steadily from GH¢24.8million in 2000 to GH¢265.04millon in 2014, according to Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, Minister of Roads and Highways.
He said this year, an amount of GH¢ 322.1million had been projected by the Ghana Road Fund to enable it to meet part of the road maintenance budget of the various agencies dependent on it.
Alhaji Fuseini disclosed these in a keynote address at a public forum on: ‘Financing Road Maintenance,’ at Ho last Friday.
It was organised by the Ghana Road Fund Board.
The minister said in spite of the achievement in revenue collection, the Ghana Road Fund carried a debt of GH¢230.86 million from 2014 into the current year.
He said since the capacity of the Ghana Road Fund could only sustain 60 per cent of the country’s roads maintenance needs, “about 40 per cent of our road network is being left unattended to yearly”.
To address that problem, he said that government was exploring other financial sources such as the long-term pre-financing of road maintenance works, adding that “another area of financing is the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) and the Maintain, Operate and Transfer (MOT) concepts of Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements.
He said that the Ghana Road Fund Board was also streamlining the institutional structures of the secretariat to be more effective in the mobilisation of revenue and the implementation of the arrangements to support maintenance activities.
Earlier, Mr. Godwin Brocke, acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Roads and Transport, said routine road maintenance expected to be undertaken this year by the various road agencies included 11,600kilometresm of trunk roads, 17,000 kilometres of feeder roads and 8,200 kilometres of urban roads.
He said the periodic maintenance programmes to be undertaken by the Ghana Highway Authority, the Departments of Feeder Roads and the Department of Urban Roads, this year also included 635 kilometres of trunk roads, 1,350 kilometres of feeder roads and 4, 300 kilometres of urban roads, respectively.
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