Trading Ghana's bauxite for projects good decision - Anthony Karbo

The Deputy Minister for Roads and Highways, Hon. Anthony Abayifaa Kabbo has held a press conference to provide a detailed explanation of the benefits Ghana may derive from the barter agreement recently signed by parliament with Sino hydro Cooperation Limited.

This agreement is an exchange of Ghana’s Bauxite that would be exchanged for the financing of infrastructural projects in the country.

Elaborating on the benefits of this butter system, the Deputy Minister said that other countries have found very clever and intelligent ways of addressing their infrastructural needs because their governments are not in a better position to finance such projects.

He made references to Kenya and Equatorial Guinea. “In Kenya for instance where a high speed rail was constructed which we are all praising, it was not the Kenya’s tax payer’s money that was used. It was this same kind of butter arrangement. If you go to Equatorial Guinea and see the massive infrastructure that are going on there, they are all from these same kind of arrangement”, he stressed.

He also indicated that there is the need for the country to support the government for these types of initiatives. “We have so many resources. Many of us would admit for instance, we have a galamsey menace that is hurting our country.

It is the Chinese who are largely in this galamsey menace. If we have a smart and intelligent way to address the Chinese and have a butter system where their populace would not have to populate our country to mine our gold but rather we say we have processed gold while they help us finance our massive projects within the Sino Hydro 2 Billion facility.



You should see the type of projects that we are embarking on”, he explained. He added that, it was this same kind of arrangements that led Ghana into commercial oil production.

He said, it took such arrangements for Ghana to strike oil in commercial quantities though the country knew for many years that we had oil. “Under these kinds of arrangements, there is no business of royalties.

We are saying come in for processed bauxite then we point to you that we want this road, interchange or highway to be constructed”, he concluded.