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Dr. Richard Winfred Anane, a leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has narrated how the actions of Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia allegedly made the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government lose a $20 billion investment from China.
According to Dr Anane, a former minister of health under President John Agyekum Kufuor’s government, the investment was mainly for the construction of the Accra-Ouagadougou railway line and also included the establishment of companies that will process Ghana’s bauxite, manganese, and iron ore into a final product.
Speaking in an interview on King Tom TV, monitored by GhanaWeb, the former health minister said that he introduced the main investor of the project to former President Kufuor for him to speak to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He added that Akufo-Addo sent his Vice President to China to finalize the deal, but the action of Bawumia made Ghana lose the investment.
“You have had people talking about the bauxite at Nyinahin (the Sinohydro). The real thing was big, and I do remember we took it to President Kufuor. We made one of the Chinese, who was very close to the President of China come to Ghana… I took him to President Kufuor and told him that if he gave this to Akufo-Addo, it would help the government.
“We felt that we had to construct the railway line from Accra to Burkina Faso, from Takoradi to Burkina Faso. We thought this was possible. It was not just about bauxite; we were looking at manganese and the iron ore at Zabzugu. The plan was to process the manganese and iron ore to get something we can use for steel, which will also be used for the construction of the railway.
“For the bauxite what we had to discuss with the Chinese was that we want the bauxite ore processed in Ghana and not exported to China in its raw state… Nana Akufo-Addo sent the vice president to China for the discussions. But unfortunately, the things they went to do there were not good,” he said in Twi.
“They did not help Ghana; this is why the deal did not go through. At that time were looking for $20 billion but the things that happened were not good… so those talking about the Sinohydro deal don’t know what they are talking about,” he added.
About the Sinohydro agreement:
The multi-billion-dollar Ghana deal with China’s Sinohydro has been praised internationally as a model that the rest of Africa should adapt, to lessen the financial woes of their economies.
It is considered as a game-changing deal, sealed by the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo in 2018 with the Chinese State-owned Sinohydro Company. This a multi-billion-dollar barter deal of refined Ghanaian bauxite, a mineral essential to aluminium production, in place of Chinese construction of infrastructure in the country.
The deal has been strikingly elaborated as a complete departure from direct foreign currency loans from China, in exchange for infrastructure, which many African Governments easily adopt to fund their development projects at the expense of sound fiscal management of their economies.
Unlike the US$2 billion Ghana-Sinohydro arrangement which is not a direct foreign currency loan, but a direct barter with refined bauxite exchanged for its equivalent of infrastructure – with no cash exchanging hands.
Watch the interview below:
