Accra, March 1, GNA- Mr Solomon Asamoah, Chief Executive Officer Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF), says the Fund is seeking to move the Ghanaian construction industry to lower carbon and more resource-efficient path through certified green buildings.
He said GIIF and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) were committed to significantly promoting the Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (EDGE) software, standard and certification in their operations.
EDGE software can be used for free to design a resource-efficient commercial or residential building in more than 160 countries.
Mr Asamoah told the GNA that as an infrastructure Fund with high sustainability credentials and keen on contributing towards the achievement of the nationally determined contributions of Ghana under the Paris agreement, they wanted to do infrastructure that met the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
“We believe in the preservation of natural resources and our climate for future generations,” he said.
The World Economic Forum in its 2020 Global Risks report identified the top ten risks up to the year 2030 and beyond in terms of likelihood of occurrence and impact.
Out of the ten, seven of them are of an environmental and social nature. Per the report, climate now tops the risks agenda at the global stage, whiles the economy which was the core risk some ten years ago has disappeared from the top five risks on the global stage.
The CEO said the concern highlights the importance of climate issues in the global discourse and the relevance of GIIF’s collaboration with the IFC.
GIIF is a body corporate wholly Ghana-owned and established under the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund Act, 2014, Act 877.
The Fund is initially capitalised at $325 million of anchor paid-in equity with a mandate to identify, develop, invest, mobilise and manage investments in a diversified portfolio of infrastructure assets in Ghana for national development, profitably and sustainably.
GIIF is flexible in the instruments of financing (equity, debt and anything in between) that it deploys for non-recourse to limited recourse transactions.
Mr Asamoah said over the last four years GIIF had been very busy and had invested $280 million in a portfolio of 12 infrastructure projects in seven sectors across Ghana.
He said more importantly, for every $1 GIIF invested in projects, it had managed to bring in an additional $10 from external investors.
“This is already a sizeable return on the initial capital deployed by the government in GIIF,” he said.
He said also impressive was that to date, every sponsor backed by GIIF has been Ghanaian and this aligned with its ethos of raising the level of Ghanaian participation in infrastructure by building world-class projects with local sponsors.
Some of GIIF portfolio of investments are Ghana Airports Company (the development of the new international terminal (Terminal 3) at Kotoka International Airport and new regional airports), Takoradi Port expansion (improved container and process handling) and the Western Corridor Fibre project (creating ultra-modern communication network infrastructure).
The rest are Takoradi Oil Jetty (new multi-product oil jetty capable of receiving vessels of up to 70,000DWT) Pullman Hotel (which is EDGE Certified by the IFC), Crown Forest Ecological Safari Park (also EDGE Certified by IFC) and Atuabo Power plant (which will convert flared gas into electricity).
It has raised financing from two Premier global financing institutions and on July 2, 2021, the French Development Agency, executed an US$85million, 10-year Credit Facility Agreement with GIIF to on-lend to sustainable infrastructure projects in Ghana.
The CEO said this was accompanied by a €400,000 technical assistance package to help build capacity within the Fund for increasing its green investments.
“The AfDB has just approved a $75million facility for the Fund, again for on-lending to infrastructure projects in Ghana,” he added.
Mr Asamoah said the above two facilities from global Development Finance Institutions represented a major endorsement for GIIF in the way it operated and ran its business to international standards.
He said this would enable GIIF to increase the range and depth of infrastructure projects it could fund within Ghana.
“The Fund is not resting on its oars either. It has a strong pipeline of projects in critical sectors of the economy that it looks to make strategic interventions into,” he said.
He said GIIF would continue to promote sustainable design practices, and with IFC, jointly present the benefits of using the EDGE software, standard, and certification systems.
GNA