Resetting Ghana’s transport system will require not just capital injection but responsible utilisation of funds and stronger enforcement frameworks, the Executive Head of Brands and Marketing at Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mawuko Afadzinu, has said.
He stressed that without rebuilding trust and ensuring financial discipline, even the most well-designed interventions in the transport sector would struggle to achieve long-term impact.
Speaking at the Graphic Business-Stanbic Bank Breakfast Meeting in Accra, Mr Afadzinu revealed how the $50 million revolving transport financing scheme initiated by Stanbic Bank nearly two decades ago collapsed due to a growing trust deficit and partnership challenges within the sector.
He said the first tranche of the facility financed 200 brand new buses to improve public transport services at a time about 80 per cent of the sector was controlled by private operators.
“The whole idea was to operate a disciplined revolving fund over a 10-year period so that we would continuously replace old vehicles with brand new buses.
“However, the initiative did not survive the full cycle.
That fund collapsed because we had difficult challenges in the partnership, primarily due to the nature of how some of us behave when we access funds.
The Ghanaian trust deficit kicked in,” he stated.
Recounting how the bank, in 2007, committed $50 million to support the renewal of Ghana’s commercial transport fleet, he said if the scheme was sustained, the current congestion and inefficiencies in the urban transport system could have been significantly mitigated.
Breakfast meeting
The breakfast meeting, a joint initiative of the Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL) and Stanbic Bank Ghana, is a series of quarterly dialogues that feature carefully selected topics to influence government policies to create a friendlier business environment.
On the theme: “Resetting Ghana’s Urban Transport System: An Economic Necessity”, the maiden edition of this year’s breakfast meeting brought together policymakers, regulators, transport operators, financial institutions, urban planners and development partners to discuss ways by which the government could accelerate efforts for the necessary reforms to modernise the country’s urban transport architecture to drive economic growth and improve productivity.
Economic impact
The Head of Financial Advisory and Equity Capital Markets (Corporate and Investment Banking) at Stanbic Bank Ghana, Isaac Simpson, emphasised that Ghana’s inefficient urban transport system was imposing a heavy economic burden on the country, with losses estimated at billions of cedis annually.
“From the report quoted earlier, we are losing about GH¢4.5 billion annually, and that figure continues to grow. But when you begin to quantify opportunity cost and health-related effects, the number could be closer to GH¢10 billion,” he stated.
He explained that long hours spent in traffic directly reduced productivity and weakened private sector competitiveness.
“If you spend two, three or four hours in traffic instead of doing something productive, that is a cost to the economy. It affects output, it affects business efficiency, and ultimately it affects GDP growth,” he added.
Mr Simpson said beyond lost working hours, stress and health complications associated with congestion also imposed indirect economic costs on households and the state.
On financing solutions, he proposed innovative funding models such as infrastructure bonds, blended finance, pension fund investments and climate-focused capital to support transport development without increasing public debt.
“We have significant pension assets in Ghana that can be allocated to infrastructure. There are also climate-driven funds ready to invest in sustainable transport projects,” he stated, adding that clear revenue visibility and strong regulation would be critical to attracting private capital into the sector.
Government’s role
The Director of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Transport, Eric Tetteh-Addison, acknowledged that structural and policy fragmentation had slowed reform efforts within the sector.
“Transport should be complementary, not competitive,” he said, noting that previously, multiple ministries pursued different priorities within the same sector, making policy harmonisation difficult.
He stressed that transport was a “derived demand,” explaining that people travel to access services, not for transport itself.
He added that the ministry was currently reviewing regulations to streamline service delivery, with implementation expected to make reforms more visible.
Data-driven planning
For his part, the Director of Research, Innovation and Development at the University of Education, Winneba, Professor Enoch F. Sam, emphasised the need for integrated and data-driven planning to reset Ghana’s transport system.
“We have focused too much on road transport to the detriment of rail and other modes,” he said, adding that many goods currently moved by road should ideally be transported by rail to free up space for passengers.
“Reform must be guided by research and science. You cannot solve problems without understanding the root causes. We need data, evidence and proper planning to prioritise effectively,” he added.
