13 Mar 2018

Project management, monitoring and evaluation is one of the key components necessary for the successful implementation of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) projects, says the director of development programmes at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Ms Keineetse Lepekoane.

She said the lack of proper and effective project management, monitoring and evaluation had on several incidences had detrimental consequences on the delivery of quality government projects.

Highlighting the need for effective project management by government in all projects in which it had interest, Ms Lepekoane, who was speaking at a PPP capacity building workshop on Monday, said there had been situations in which there had been no monitoring by government once projects had been handed over to the private sector.

Discouraging the laxity by government officials to monitor projects, she noted that history had shown that sitting back and assuming that projects would be delivered to government’s expectation without any effort from officials to manage and monitor them was risky and often yielded undesirable results.

On the importance of PPPs, Ms Lepekoane observed that as many countries, Botswana included, were facing many challenges in the delivery of public infrastructure and related services as a result of public funding sources falling short of the investments required to cater for such, mobilising private sector funds had been identified as one way of addressing the challenge.

“In search of better ways to deploy national resources in an efficient way, the government adopted the PPP initiative as an alternative means to find more ways to meet the huge demand for infrastructure financing required to deliver public services,” she explained.

She pointed out, however, that PPPs were not just about funding but were also about improving the efficiency of infrastructure management and public service delivery.

Furthermore, she said they provided opportunities for innovation and transparent procurement of public projects and services.

Ms Lepekoane also implored workshop participants to note that there was a flipside to PPPs. She said if designed and implemented improperly, they could result in delays, deterioration of services, increases in operational costs and in worst scenarios, projects being abandoned.

Giving an overview of the PPP unit under the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, she said it had been established to coordinate and monitor the PPP policy as well as the implementation of PPP projects.

“Since its establishment, the unit in consultation with different ministries has identified 16 potential PPP projects, 10 of which have been successfully registered and approved to proceed to the next stage of undertaking feasibility studies,” she said.

The chairperson of Altra Capital, Mr John Davie, contracted by accounting and auditing firm KPMG Botswana, stated that several recommendations had been made following Botswana’s PPP readiness assessment that was conducted in 2016.

He said among those, the need to develop PPP legislation and regulations, the need for stakeholder engagement as well as the importance of reviewing previous PPP projects was identified.

Explaining what the PPP model entailed, Mr Davie said an effective PPP project should contain an expectation of service improvement and the dismantling of monopolies as well as increased efficiency of public services.

He also said it should allow for an enhanced role for the private sector in addition to providing the adoption of new and innovative approaches to public services delivery.

Mr Davie, who pointed out that over 120 countries were either doing or contemplating embarking on PPP programmes, said competition among the countries would continue to grow as they were all eyeing a limited pool of international advisors and financiers.

The objectives of the workshop, which is scheduled to end on Friday, include capacitating PPP unit team members with the basic concepts required to enable them to effectively prepare, develop and manage PPP projects. Ends