Kwasi Amoako-Attah
The Ministry of Roads and Highway (MRH) has shot down accusations by the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) Caucus in Parliament that the $570 million Accra-Tema Motorway contract awarded to South African-based Portuguese company, Mota-Engil, will not serve the interest of Ghana.
The NDC MPs led by Kwame Agbodza on Wednesday, January 13, 2021, called on the government to abrogate the Accra-Tema Motorway expansion contract, intimating that the contract would only serve the interest of government officials rather than protecting the public purse.
But the ministry in a statement said the government undertook a transparent and competitive process between 2017 and 2020, using public private partnership (PPP) arrangements in the selection of the contractor.
The statement signed by former Minister of Roads and Highway, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, indicated that this was done after failed attempts by the previous NDC government to procure the said works to other foreign contractors.
“The ministry wishes to state without equivocation that the assertions and conclusions made by the NDC caucus in Parliament do not represent the accurate status of the contract,” the statement added.
According to the statement, the ministry as part of the processes also undertook a market sounding event at Alisa Hotel in September 2017 where all interested bidders were briefed on the project.
“This was followed by a prequalification process from December 2018 to February 2019 in which 23 entities took part and four were prequalified,” the former minister explained and continued that a request for proposals from the four prequalified bidders was again done from July 2019 to January 2020.
The ministry said a “technical and financial evaluation of the two compliant bids was also done from February 2020 to April 2020,” besides the approval of the evaluation report by the public private partnership approval committee (PPPAC) at the Ministry of Finance, which came on June 30, 2020 and a mandate to negotiate with the preferred bidder, MOTA, and its financing partners.
“During the negotiations with the contractor, it emerged that the financial arrangements proposed by the contractor were not favourable to government hence the need to restructure the project as a design and build contract.”
“Because of the sound technical design proposal, a decision was also taken to retain the same contractor. Consequently, the MRH Â through the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) re-scoped the project and invited Mota Engil to submit a sole bid proposal in line with the relevant causes of the Public Procurement Law,” the statement said.
It noted that Mota-Engil’s bid was duly evaluated, negotiated and the statutory approvals were obtained from the PPA and the Central Tender Review Committee (CTRC), and a commercial contract was signed on December 16, 2020.
“Further approvals will be obtained from Cabinet and Parliament after the financing arrangements have been finalized,” it noted.
By Ernest Kofi Adu