IMF bailout, DDEP to blame for stalled interchanges – Roads Ministry

Nasir Ahmed Yartey, the head of public relations at the Ministry of Roads and Highways, has claimed that the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) and the country’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement are to blame for the country’s blocked road interchanges around the nation.

The Obetsebi Lamptey interchange, the Flower Pot interchange, the Tema Motorway interchange, the Nungua Barrier interchange, the Kumasi Suame interchange, and the Takoradi PTC junction (which is roughly 75% complete) are some important interchanges around the nation that still need to be finished.

“Before the IMF and the debt exchange programme, we got into as a country, you agree with me that all these interchanges that you referred to were moving at similar paces, and they were moving very fast. It is the IMF and the debt exchange that has affected them and slowed them down.” Mr. Yartey said this in an interview on Citi FM in Accra on 4th September, 2023 Monday.

According to Mr. Yartey, the only obstacle remaining in the building of the bridge across the interstate is the Flower Pot interchange, which is anticipated to be finished by the end of March 2024. Other tasks won’t require much time after it is finished.

“The Flower Pot interchange is on schedule to be completed. The major hurdle now is the construction of the bridge over the motorway. We issued a press release on it this morning, and work is going on over there very seriously. Once we are done with the construction of the bridge over the motorway, what will be left will be the groundwork, road work, and other things.

“Those ones don’t take much time. The concrete ones don’t take much time, so once we are done with that one, we should be finishing that project on schedule. The project is scheduled to be completed early next year, so we are looking at somewhere by the end of the first quarter or the second quarter of next year,” he said.

The Obetsebi-Lamptey interchange, Nungua interchange, and PTC interchange construction projects were all impacted by the DDEP, and the government is presently in negotiations with the project’s financiers to get the project up and running, according to the head of PR at the Ministry of Roads and Highways.

“That one (Obestebi-Lamptey interchange) together with Nungua and PTC in Takoradi have been affected by the debt exchange that we’ve entered into. As I speak to you, the government is negotiating with its financiers to see how best we can get these projects back running, and we are hoping that before the year ends, we should be hearing some good news and getting the contractors back,” he stated.