Ashanti Ports Services Limited (APSL), the Concessionaire of the Boankra Integrated Logistics Terminal project, has assured President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that the project would be completed by March 2024.
That pledge was made when the President visited the site of the construction on Sunday, as part of activities marking his four-day working tour of the Ashanti Region.
Popularly referred to as the Boankra Inland Port Project, the venture, covering a total land area of 413 acres, has been on the drawing board for some 18 years.
The idea of the Boankra Integrated Logistics Terminal project was in the pipeline during the Kufuor era. It encountered several challenges, a significant one being the exit of the NPP government in 2009.
However, President Akufo-Addo cut the sod on November 2020, for the construction of the Port.
The Concessionaire informed President Akufo-Addo that it was working to deliver the project within the scheduled date.
“By the end of 2023, 80 per cent will be done, and, by the end of the first quarter of 2024, we will finish the project,” APSL said.
The APSL was hopeful that the eastern and western railway lines, which would further improve the viability of the Boankra inland port, would be completed on schedule.
APSL is a joint venture of Afum Quality Limited of Ghana and DSS Associates of the Republic of Korea. It has committed to investing a total of $330 million for the realisation of the project.
The Concessionaire is expected to design, engineer, finance, procure, construct, operate, and maintain the inland Port, and transfer the title to the Government after 30 years.
The project had been initiated to provide service to importers and exporters in the middle and northern parts of the country, and also to act as a major conduit for the efficient transportation of transit traffic to and from our neighbouring landlocked countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
“It is my hope and expectation that the Concessionaire will not renege on the confidence reposed in it and will take all the necessary actions to deliver the project on schedule and budget,” the President said when he inspected work at the site.
He was hopeful that “this project and other similar infrastructure projects, such as the development of the Keta Port, the Tema-Akosombo Railway Line, and the ongoing port expansion projects at Tema and Takoradi Ports, would make a positive contribution in ensuring that Ghana derives maximum benefits from the AfCFTA.”
After completion of the Terminal, it would be fitted with an inland clearance depot, customs bonded and unbonded estates, commercial areas such as banks, offices and trading facilities, vehicle parking areas, light industrial areas, and an administration complex.
GNA