News:
Governor Kwame Agbodza
November 3, 2021
Ghana’s Ranking Member on Road and Transport, Governor Kwame Agbodza said constructing railways to interconnect member states within the West African sub-region is very critical to help realise the vision of trade and free movement of ECOWAS.
According to him individual member states are working on their own to get their railway networks functional, as Ghana is working to connect with Burkina Faso.
“We need to interconnect within the sub-region to boom cross border trade, but we should have some level of understanding so that when we build railways to a standard in Ghana, Togo would have same standard and when it is time for us to converge, we can harmonies and use our railway network”.
In an interview, he pointed out that some level of understanding has been going on and added that railways is capital intensive and does not think any individual member state can develop railway base on private enterprise alone.
For example in the United Kingdom when it is past ten o’clock, “if you go check the underground it would be running almost empty, because the rush hour is over but trains are still running someone has to pay for the loses”.
He further added that government cannot expect the private sector alone to pay for the full cost of investment in the railway infrastructure, government funds has to go into it as a form of investment to sustain it.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com