The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) last year pegged Ghana�s Gross Domestic Product at 6.9 percent but such seemingly impressive growth has not translated into the provision of legal infrastructure to ensure the socio-economic development of the country.
Magdalene Appenteng, Director of the Public Investment Division of the Ministry of Finance, who disclosed this yesterday in Accra at a day�s forum on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), said the implementation gap has come about because government was not getting the needed assistance from its donors.
The forum was on the theme: �Leveraging PPPs for accelerated national development: the role of the local private partner.�
She said studies on Ghana�s capital requirements, both capital expenditure, operations and maintenance, indicated that for the next decade, government required an average of $377 million annually to provide the needed infrastructure in the transport sector alone; $1.25 billion for the power sector and $135 million for water supply and sanitation needs, among others.
She therefore appealed to the players in the country�s private sector to take advantage of the opportunities presented by government�s launch of the national policy on PPPs in June 2011 and October 2011 respectively and help develop Ghana.
Wilson Atta Krofah, former president of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce & Industry, who chaired the function, in a remark, said the cost of singularly undertaking infrastructural development by government was too high because traditional sources of revenue were low.
�PPP is a good way to develop local content in Ghana. However, while it is agreed that the private sector should partner government in delivering its services, unfortunately the local government services are not able to consummate the partnership opportunities adequately.
�The private sector in Ghana is small, and therefore unfortunately foreign firms by default are the only ones who can take advantage of the PPPs that are available. That is not deliberate on government�s part. But we can do more by partnership with either local firms or foreign ones to develop projects.�
Furthermore, he said private sector players could partner government to construct schools with affordable materials, as in other places in the world, instead of cement and other materials which are expensive.
Urging the participants to position themselves for PPPs to grow their businesses, he said PPP provides opportunities to expand the private sector.
A recent Africa Infrastructure Diagnostic report revealed that Ghana must sustain spending with at least $1.5 billion per annum over the next decade to address infrastructure deficit.
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