Mr. Joe Gidisu, Minister of Roads and Highways, has announced that about GH¢1.01billion was generated by Road Fund between 2000 and 2010. He said in 2010 a total of GH¢182.0million was realised from the fund’s various revenue sources as compared to GH¢136.0million accrued in 2009. He explained that the relatively significant upward jump was due to the increases in road and bridge tolls, vehicle registration fees, road user fees and International Transit Fees. The Minister stated that GH¢185million had been projected for 2011 so as to meet part of the road maintenance budget of the agencies which depend on the fund to undertake their maintenance programmes and activities. The current capacity of the fund can sustain only about 60 percent of the country’s road maintenance needs, he added. Nii Quaye Kumah, Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, read the Minister’s speech at a public forum organised by the Ghana Road Fund Management Board under the theme “Financing of Road Maintenance” for about 200 participants. They included road contractors, Municipal/District Chief Executives and members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transportation at Sunyani. Mr. Gidisu expressed regret that despite the above financial achievement, the fund carried forward an indebtedness of GH¢74.2million from 2010 to 2011 - explaining that the situation imposes a 40 percent financing gap on national road maintenance needs. Mr. Gidisu said as part of the solution to the revenue short-fall, government has been studying some recommendations made by the Ministry of Roads and Highways to make the fund more responsive to the road maintenance needs. He stressed that road construction and maintenance are very expensive ventures, citing that the cost of resurfacing one kilometre road is GH¢135,000 whilst resealing costs GH¢70,000 per kilometre. The Minister said in 2001 the national road network was about 39,000 kilometres, but is now over 67,000 kilometres. He said despite that massive expansion which should have blunted the improvement, the road condition mix has improved from 27 percent good, 17 percent fair and 56 percent bad in 2001 to became 41 percent good, 27 percent fair and 32 percent bad at the end of 2008. Mr. George Aidoo, Director of Monitoring and Evaluation at Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), who gave a presentation on behalf of Mr. Anthony Essilfie, Chief Director, GHA, on “Ghana’s Road Programme and the Role of Maintenance”, identified a number of challenges facing that sector. They included not only inadequate logistics for project supervision but also low delivery capacity of the local construction industry, thereby affecting early completion of road projects and conversion of a large number of vehicles from the use of petrol to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) on which no levy is charged, he stressed. Source: GNA