A statement from the World Bank office in Ghana said “this support is the first phase in a series set to close a critical funding gap and to leverage urgently needed private sector investment from 2012-2016.”
The statement said the support would allow Ghana government the space and time to focus on policy, planning and regulation, while the World Banks paid for private sector firms to take care of the day-to-day operations of various tasks, allowing both the private and public sectors to better coordinate while working more efficiently.
“Specifically, phase one of the PPP project for Ghana seeks to improve the legislative, institutional, financial, fiduciary and technical framework to generate a pipeline of bankable PPP projects,” the statement said. .
It said the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor welcomed the gesture from the World Bank, saying he was glad the World Bank was supporting Ghana with the money because PPPs were a cost effective way to stimulate the infrastructure needs of Ghana’s industry.
The Finance Minister said “our goal is to attract investors to our rapidly growing economy, which we expect will do even better with the injection of additional technical and infrastructural support to the exports sector.”
In a briefing for Banks Board of Executive Directors, Bank experts pointed out that Ghana lags behind its Sub-Saharan African peers in terms of private sector investment in infrastructure, attracting far less private finance as other African peers.
They said countries such as Benin, DRC, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda all captured between 1.0 and 1.6 percent of GDP for infrastructure investment, while the most success country in this regard has been Mozambique which captured in excess of 3.5 percent of GDP.
“Meanwhile, Ghana registered just less than one percent during the same period,” the statement said.
Ghana is an important partner of the World Bank and we are glad to be providing some of the funds needed to make this initiative possible. We do hope that the new program will help bring on board important private stakeholders to contribute to Ghanas infrastructure development, said Yusupha B. Crookes, World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Cocoa and gold exports have lead to high global commodity prices, and increased construction and service activities in Accra, Ghanas capital. To date, informal economic activity has blocked the GoG from capturing the power PPPs can provide more effectively. The start of oil production is projected to underpin 13 percent real GDP growth in 2011. Strong non-oil activity is predicted to contribute to 67 percent growth in 2012 and beyond. Gross national income per capital was estimated to be US$1,240 in 2010 (using Atlas method) making Ghana a lower middle income country.
The World Bank’s current portfolio in Ghana consists of 31 IDA-financed projects with a net commitment of approximately US$2,000 billion.
From: Adom News/Ghana
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