$3BN CHINA LOAN IN LIMBO …IMANI Blames Poor Packaging For The Delay
By Emmanuel Akli
The hullabaloo that greeted negotiations and the approval of Parliament of the $3 billion loan from the China Development Bank (CDB) to carry out various infrastructural developments across the country would simply not die away.
Imani Ghana, a local Think Tank, after its initial reservation about the loan, is raising another alarm that the government would find it hard to get the loan contracted with the Chinese, due to the poor packaging of the projects, which are going to be financed by the loan.
Parliament, in 2011, approved the $3 billion loan, which was negotiated for by the late President Mills, after the opposition had raised red flags, including the allegation that $7 billion of our oil revenue had been used as collateral.
The loan is to be used to finance the Eastern corridor roads, the western railway line, gas infrastructure, a number of beach landing sites, and feeder roads among others.
A memorandum of understanding to that effect was signed in September 2010, by President John Atta Mills.
The International Monetary Fund, which has been supporting Ghana’s economy with loans and other interventions, later approved of the loan in December 2011.
The release of the funds for the execution of the intended projects, however, delayed until the then Vice President, John Dramani Mahama, led a government delegation to China in April last year, and succeeded in signing an agreement for the release of $1 billion out of the estimated $3 billion.
The funds were to execute the construction of the gas infrastructure to process gas from the Jubilee fields, and an ICT platform for the surveillance of the oil and gas infrastructure.
The development of the gas infrastructure contract, which includes the laying of pipes under water from the Jubilee fields to wheel natural gas to the processing plant at Atuabo, is being executed by Sinopec, a Chinese company. Sinopec set June this year as the deadline for the completion of the gas project.
Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle in Accra on Wednesday, this week, the founding President of Imani, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, doubted whether Sinopec could meet the June deadline that it had set.
According to him, the company promised to complete the project in December last year, but failed to meet the target. It then set February this year, which it again failed to deliver.
To him, therefore, the June timeline Sinopec has set could not be trusted. He contended that the failure of the gas development company to meet its deadlines could be attributable to lack of funds, but Ghanaians are not being told the truth.
Cudjoe further told The Chronicle that the bulk of the Chinese loans were not being released because of the poor packaging of the projects to be financed by the loan.
According to him, no bank would finance a project that is seen as not profitable, and that the earlier the government did its homework regarding the packaging of the projects to make it viable in the eyes of the lender, the better it would be for the country.
According to the Imani Founding President, Liberia also managed to secure about $2.7 billion from the same Chinese, but because of the poor packaging of the projects they were going to execute with the loan, the money was never disbursed.
When told that the government of Ghana had decided to use part of its oil as collateral, and that the source of paying back the loan had already been secured, Mr. Cudjoe argued that notwithstanding this agreement, any lending bank would always make sure that the project it is going to finance is viable, and this pertains to the international banks.
A government source contacted by The Chronicle, however, denied claims by Imani that poor packaging had caused the delay in the release of the funds. According to the source, the release of the funds had delayed because the government was looking for its counterpart funding for the projects, which would soon be ready.
On the delay in executing the gas infrastructure project by Sinopec, the source said though the project was being financed with the same CDB loan, the executing company was financing the project until it hands it over to the government, and that any delay could not be attributable to the poor packaging of the project.
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Is the President of Imani also a member of government of NDC? He seemed to know a lot but gives no detailed explanation for whatever has gone wrong witht he 1 Billion or 3 Billion Chinese loansdspite all the long talk of its strange-looking President Franklin Cudjoe; but lo and behold, not only NDC supporting Ghanaians know everything going on with the country’s finances and fiscal policies. So many other Ghanaians are also aware of all these machinations and schematics of the thieving NDC/left wing socialist revolutionaries to rob a poor country of all its resources for the use of few politicians from the same pool of political ideology and persuasion, now converged conveniently behind this mahama led government.
The fact remains and we all witnessed it that President John Dramani Mahama went to China to meet Mr Exim, owner of Exim Bank to release 1 BILLION DOLLARS for the Political campaign of NDC in the 2012 Elections. That is the money they all chopped inside and used the rest to bribe the Electorate!
The BILLION CHINESE DOLLAR LOAN has already been spent on outboard motors, motor bikes, saloon cars, SUVU vehicles, lap top computers, enamels, fishing basins, mobile phones, cloths and many other Chinese goods flooded into Ghana three monthds before the Elections to influence voters in a manner never seen in the annals of Ghana’s politics. Not even the First Republic or UNIGOV time was such gargantuan bribery and corruption witnessed.
The cock and bull story about some Sinopec constructing Gas under sea can only convince children. There is nothing going on. These statements from IMANI are all carefully placed by government insiders working with these people to disinform Ghanaians. The whole NDC government of Ghana is based on a large retinue of communicators. That is the stronghiold of most left wing governments as NDC. PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA is their most strongest asset but as Peter Tosh sang: “You can fool some people some day; but you cannot fool all the people all the time…for they will soon see the light!!! One day the truth, like a cork, will resurface and all these IMANI lies will be revealed.