Ghana’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to the use of Private-Public Partnership (PPP) as an appropriate strategy for financing public infrastructural development for the accelerated economic development of the country.

This was contained in a press release by the Ghana government yesterday.

PPP is a contractual arrangement between a public sector entity and a private one for the delivery of public services, with a significant transfer of risk to the private sector over a period of time.

When passed, the government of President John Mahama hopes to use PPP to provide better infrastructure and services through the use of private sector financial, human and technical resources, thereby freeing government resources for other equally important uses.

The statement said that the government has drafted a legal framework to govern the operations of PPP in Ghana, while an appropriate system for capacity building has also been designed by government, with the support of the World Bank, British Department for International Development (DfID) and other development partners to ensure its success.

At a Stakeholder Consultation Forum on the Draft PPP Law in Accra, the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Seth Terkper noted that over the years, government had been grappling with the provision of timely, adequate, and reliable infrastructure and services to facilitate the economic development of the country.

He said $1 billion was required annually over the next decade if Ghana was to make up for the country’s infrastructural deficit.

He said this amount of money could not be met from budgetary resources alone, hence the need to identify other sources of funding as well as adopt other strategies that would encourage the private sector to be effectively engaged to adopt the PPP initiative.

Ghana hopes to use PPP to undertake a number of projects. Last month the Minister of Aviation indicated that the government will build a new international airport through a PPP. Already the government has appointed a Minister of State in Charge of PPP, Mr Fiifi Kwetey.