Roads and Highways Minister and Adaklu MP, Governs Kwame Agbodza, has clarified the scope of government’s Big Push programme, drawing a sharp distinction between new projects and inherited ones.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Tuesday, he said, “There are 54 different projects under the new Big Push.”

Pressed on what defines the “new” Big Push, he explained that these are projects initiated afresh by the current administration.

“Yes, the new big push means that they were projects which were not already under contract. We started them afresh,” he said.

He contrasted this with what he described as the “old Big Push,” referring to projects inherited from previous governments.

“There’s something we call old Big Push. These are projects we did not promise, but by the time we took office, we inherited,” he noted.

According to him, the government made a deliberate policy decision not to abandon ongoing works.

“We inherited and are not repeating what we saw in 2017 when we said, ' Oh, we didn’t start it. So we abandoned it. The President directed us never to cancel or stop any project, even in the face of difficulties. Let’s keep working with them to address it,” he said.

He cited stalled projects such as Ofankor and Kasoa-Winneba as examples that have now been absorbed into the Big Push framework.

“So automatically, we carried on that as a Big Push, because the problem was that there was no dedicated funding for it,” he explained.

Providing a financial breakdown, the Minister said, “the total cost of that is close to GH¢15 billion as part of the entire big push portfolio.”

He added that, “the new projects will be about 55 billion. And then the old project, novated, will be about another GH¢14 billion plus.”

Mr Agbodza stressed that the projects are spread nationwide, with some divided into multiple lots for efficiency.

“So the 54 projects are all spread across the country. Some of them are just a brick of the same project,” he said, citing the Tamale Ring Road as an example.

“If you go to the Tamale ring road, there are three different lots on that plane, but it’s just one ring road; the three different contractors are working on it,” he explained.

He said breaking projects into smaller contracts helps manage risk and improve delivery.

“It could have been one contractor. The one contractor failed. It fails everybody. But when you break it up, the failure might be detectable with a single contractor. We can ask the next contractor to take over that lot,” he stated.

On the total number of contracts, the Minister disclosed, “the big push, yes, it will be 54 plus 23… 54 separate contracts,” noting that some contractors are handling multiple sections.

He also addressed growing public confusion about the programme’s scope.

“The discussion about Big Push is that people are now beginning to see every road project that is ongoing as Big Push,” he said.

“I think it is not even worth describing, because it’s not as if we are saying when the project is not christened Big Push, it is not important,” he added.

Clarifying further, he stressed, “We are just saying that these ones are priority one of what we want to complete quickly, and then the rest follow.”

“Emphatically, 54 projects are the ones that qualify to be called the new big push. And then 23 are old projects novated,” he concluded.