3 billion Chinese loan disbursements begins next month

The Chairman of Parliament's Finance Committee, James Averji has confirmed that the China Development Bank would from next month resume disbursement of the 3 billion dollar loan to Ghana.

Parliament earlier this month made some amendments to the loan-agreement. This was upon the request of the Chinese Bank as a condition to resume the disbursement.

Mr. Averji tells JOYBUSINESS, government now expects the funds to start coming in for designated projects.

“Once we have approved it and parliament communicated it to the Finance Minister, we think the CDB would have no issues anymore. There are disbursements they should have released so now that the problems are solved what are they waiting for, they should go ahead and disburse” he said.

Mr. Averji however maintains the facility would be disbursed as and when the various phases of the projects are completed.

“This is a project loan and so no Chinese bank would disburse the money directly into Ghana's consolidated fund. There are 12 different projects that are funded by the loan of which two are currently running. The issue is that whenever the contractor of a project submits the project certificate to the CDB, the funds are paid directly to the contractor and not the government ” he explained.

The country has so far been able to draw a little over 200 million dollars since it signed the agreement with the Chinese government in 2011. Government has since last year being expecting about 750 million dollars of the facility for the construction of the Gas Processing plant in the Western Region.

Story by Ghana / Joy Business / Emmanuel Agyei / George Wiafe