Ms Hannah Tetteh, Minister of Trade and Industry, answering questions after addressing a press conference on the benefits of the President's trip to China at the Conference Room of the Ministry of Information in Accra.
Nineteen priority projects to transform Ghana into a prosperous Middle Income industrial nation are to be accomplished by 2012 with a $13 billion Chinese financial assistance package secured by President John Evans Atta Mills on his recent visit to China.
The specific projects identified are in the health, road, railway, agricultural and educational sectors and the crafting of a national energy policy framework as a foundation for an oil and gas driven industrial architecture.
About $10 billion of the amount is expected to come from the China Exim Bank and includes $4.5 billion for the extention of railway services from Kumasi in the Ashanti Region to Paga in Upper East Region.
The remaining $3 billion will come from the China Development Bank, and is expected to complement the other facilities to give the nation a huge infrastructural facelift.
Providing details of the actual benefits gained from the President’s economic diplomacy to the Far Eastern country, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Hanna Tetteh, also highlighted the construction of fish landing sites in selected fishing communities, including Moree, Mumford, Winneba and Senya Beraku, as being high on the agenda.
Another agreement signed involves the provision by China of a concessionary facility to support the ongoing rehabilitation of the Kpong Water Works to significantly improve water supply within the Greater Accra and Eastern regions.
The deals were struck during the President’s five-day official visit to China last month.
She said with the inflow of that external funding, there was every indication that the Better Ghana Agenda was on course and would place the government in a better position to invest in people, jobs and the economy as captured in the NDC’s 2008 manifesto.
She said the government had reliable estimates that in order to deal with the country’s infrastructural inadequacies and bring it to prosperity, it needed to invest about US$1.6 billion per annum.
“This is what is required to transform our country into the “Better Ghana” that we promised when we campaigned and asked for the mandate of our people to govern the country. We are committed to finding the resources to achieve this objective,” she said.
Giving specific details of the bilateral assistance, grants and donations from the Chinese government, Ms Tetteh said a grant agreement had been signed to provide funds totalling US$12 million for a number of projects, including accelerating the provision of boreholes to help improve the supply of potable water to rural communities.
Additionally, she said a modern sports complex was to be constructed to serve the cluster of educational institutions, including the University of Cape Coast, in the Cape Coast metropolis, while the Kotokuraba Market in Cape Coast was also to be constructed.
On private sector commitments, Ms Tetteh said the government also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Huawei Technologies, through which the company was donating telecommunication equipment worth US$3 million to Ghana.
She said the equipment comprised video conferencing equipment and installations to interconnect the Office of the President and other executive offices to enable video conferencing among senior government officials.
It would also include laboratory equipment for the University for Development Studies, the University of Ghana and the University of Cape Coast for the purpose of enhancing ICT network among the three campuses, experiencing Internet and intranet networks and improving on students’ knowledge and application of ICT.
She said the government had also entered into an agreement for a comprehensive project-financing facility of US$3 billion with the China Development Bank.
That facility, she said, was to finance comprehensive infrastructure projects and, more important, the components of the key industrial projects that would help the country to create an oil and gas driven industrial architecture and transform the economy.
She named the core projects that were being targeted with those funds as the Western Corridor Roads, Gas Commercialisation Project and the Industrial Minerals Processing Estate.
Ms Tetteh stressed that the constitutional review that was currently ongoing would create the framework for a more transparent and accountable government, saying, “This NDC administration would have made this country a better place than we found it when we took over the reigns of government.”