{"id":195900,"date":"2025-12-22T05:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/195900\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T05:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:42:07","slug":"gh%c2%a21bn-planned-payment-a-drop-in-the-ocean-construction-chamber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/195900\/","title":{"rendered":"GH\u00a21bn planned payment \u2018a drop in the ocean\u2019 \u2013 Construction Chamber"},"content":{"rendered":"

The President of the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry, Emmanuel Cherry, has described the government\u2019s planned release of GH\u00a21 billion to road contractors as grossly inadequate, warning that it will do little to ease the financial distress facing the sector.<\/p>\n

His comments follow a directive by President John Dramani Mahama to the Ministry of Finance to release GH\u00a21 billion to contractors owed by the state since 2017, with payment expected to be made before Christmas.<\/p>\n

President Mahama announced the directive during a sod-cutting ceremony for the Sunyani\u2013Atronie\u2013Acherensua Road Project in the Bono Region on Sunday, December 21, 2025, under the government\u2019s Big Push infrastructure programme.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Channel One Newsroom later the same day, Mr Cherry acknowledged the President\u2019s intervention but stressed that the amount earmarked for payment represents only a fraction of what contractors are owed.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs the President ordered, he made it known that the Minister for Finance should look for GH\u00a21 billion to pay us. That amount is out of the GH\u00a28.2 billion owed under the Road Fund alone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to him, the proposed payment falls far short of expectations and raises questions about how the funds would be distributed among contractors.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though it is money, it is woefully inadequate. It is not even a quarter, let alone three-quarters, of what is owed. If it happens this way, the question is who is to be paid and who is not going to be paid,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Mr Cherry added that if the payment is shared across all contractors with validated certificates, the percentage each contractor would receive would be minimal.<\/p>\n

\u201cSincerely, GH\u00a21 billion will not fly. It will not get anywhere. The Christmas the President is talking about that we are going to celebrate, I don\u2019t know how we are going to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He explained that road contractors alone are owed about GH\u00a28.2 billion, making the GH\u00a21 billion release \u201ca drop in the ocean,\u201d though he conceded that some relief is better than none.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a drop in the ocean, but half a loaf, they say, is better than one,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Mahama orders GH\u00a21bn payment to contractors owed since 2017<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The President of the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry, Emmanuel Cherry, has described the government\u2019s planned release of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-195900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}