World Bank approves $700m for Sankofa gas project

The Board of Directors of the World Bank today, Thursday July 30 approved a record investment of 700 million dollars in guarantee for Ghana’s Sankofa Gas project.

The transformational project that will help address the country’s serious energy shortages by developing new sources of clean and affordable natural gas for domestic power generation.

Ghana will be able to reduce its oil imports by up to 12 million barrels a year and cut carbon emissions by 1.6 million metric tons of CO2 annually once the Sankofa field starts to produce gas in early 2018.

Vice President for the World Bank’s Africa Region, Makhtar Diop said “the Sankofa Gas Project is a good example of how Africa can address its infrastructure challenges and lay the foundation for sustained economic growth by providing affordable and reliable power to its population.

“Innovative use of the Bank’s Guarantee Programme that helps mitigate the perception of risk and mobilizes private investment can help unlock billions of much-needed financing for large-scale infrastructure projects on the continent.”

Meanwhile, Communications specialist for World Bank-Ghana Kofi Tsikata speaking to Starr FMsaid the World Bank is hopeful that the financial assistance will go a long way to resolve Ghana’s energy challenges.

“It is true the board of Directors of the World Bank have approve the biggest ever guarantee to the tune of 700 million dollars from both the IDA and the IBRD, both World Bank institutions which will leverage a total of about 8 billion dollars in joint venture investment from institutions such as ENI, Vitol with GNPC as lead partner,” Tsikata explained.