By Nathaniel Nartey
Facebook: Nathaniel Nartey
Twitter: @Annertey¬_Nartey
The Government of Ghana has pointed to environmental reasons for its decision to abolish Road Tolls in the 2022 Budget presented to Parliament on November 17, 2021. The move comes as a surprise to many who expected Road Tolls to go up as Expects in the sector, including CEO of the Ghana Highway Authority, Christian Nti and President of the Road Contractors Association John Afful, who called for an upward adjustment of the Road Levy ahead of the Budget presentation.
The Experts posited that Road Levies would ensure that government had funds available for the construction of new roads and the maintenance of existing ones.
In explaining the decision to prioritise the environment over revenue mobilisation, Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta said “the tolling points have become unhealthy market centres, led to heavy traffic on our roads, lengthened travel time from one place to another, and impacted negatively on productivity. The congestion generated at the tolling points, besides creating these inconveniences, also leads to pollution in and around those vicinities”.
Mr. Ofori Atta was refering to the pollution of the air around toll collection points. This is important because more than 99.4% of all pollutant gases from vehicles are invisible to the naked eye.
Pollutants produced by vehicle exhausts include carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, particles, volatile organic compounds and sulfur dioxide. Hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides react with sunlight and warm temperatures to form ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone, a main ingredient in smog, can cause upper respiratory problems and lung damage.
This makes the move to abolish Road Toll a significant step in tackling climate change as it falls in line with Ghana’s updated Nationally Determined Contributions NDCs which reaffirms her resolve to “avoid at least 2,900 premature deaths per year from improved air quality”.
The Finance Minister went on to say that “The expected impact on productivity and reduced environmental pollution will more than off-set the revenue forgone by removing the tolls”.
Touching on Climate financing during the 2022 Budget presentation, he said “We are also working with the Private Sector, and with the assistance of the Green Climate Fund, to establish a multi-million-dollar Green Fund to support our climate adaptation interventions”.
Climate and environmental enthusiasts will be happy with this move by the government of Ghana because it seeks to partly address the issue of funding for Climate Change which was the
Bone of contention during COP26 in Glasgow. According to the Updated Nationally Determined Contributions NDCs, “Ghana requires between US$ 9.3 and US$ 15.5 billion of investment to implement the 47 Nationally Determined Contribution measures from 2020 to 2030”.
Ghanaians will be hopeful that the government of Ghana through the Green Climate Fund will generate money enough to enable her to tackle Climate Change issues head on and meet all deadlines agreed on during the Climate Summit in Glasgow.
