On Wednesday, the Network of Financial and Tax Reporters Gambia Chapter (NFTR) convened a day's awareness forum designed to promote a more robust partnership between the public and the private sector. The event, which attracted over forty participants, was held at the Region two Education Directorate in Brikama.
The network is cognizant of the fact that in order to ensure sustainable growth, institutions both public and private sectors have to come together and compliment each other. We therefore commend members of the network for the foresight in equipping its members with some insights into some critical issues.
However, before promoting PPP, there is a need for one to understand the framework and how it works. It is widely believed that public private partnership is key in sectors where there is a need to improve infrastructure and service delivery. In doing so, there is a need to have legislation in place as well as a regulatory framework on PPPs to facilitate local and foreign investors to implement new projects. The absence of a legal and regulatory framework on PPPs hinders close collaboration between the public and private sector as seen in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In this day and age amid scarce resources, nations have realized that sustainable development is hard to come by without forging partnerships with the private sector, who are regarded as engines of growth. It is against this backdrop that governments around the world have increasingly use the private sector in developing, financing and providing the much-needed infrastructures and service delivery.
Therefore, PPP is integral in promoting the nation's economic growth. Considered not only as genuine partners, PPPs are seen as not only dependable partners, but gamechanger in initiating meaningful development.
It helps governments to explore avenues that would have been difficult left to the public sector alone. From health, education, infrastructure to defense, nations are now relying more on PPP as the ultimate source to deliver the much-needed development. This is because there are a lot of enormous unexplored opportunities that are created to that end. Let’s remember that apart from the government, the private sector is another employer that attracts expertise from various fields. Government could make best use of some of these experts to initiate meaningful projects for the public sector, which in turn help contribute significantly to nation development.
This is why many countries around the globe are aligning their PPP initiatives and policies towards ensuring a more robust development.