Dr Gabriel Gbiel Benarkuu, the President of the College of Community and Organisational Development (CCOD), a private technical university, says leveraging on the Public Private Partnership Act (PPP) will boost infrastructure development for the 24-hour economy policy implementation.
He said advancements in infrastructure development would facilitate the implementation process and urged President John Dramani Mahama to leverage on the PPP Act to achieve that goal to create jobs and reduce poverty.
The PPP Act 2020 (Act 1039) provides for the development, implementation and regulation of public private partnership arrangements between contracting authorities and private parties for the provision of infrastructure and services.
It also establishes institutional arrangements for the regulation of public private partnerships, and to provide for related matters.
As an engine of growth and development, Dr Benarkuu explained that the PPP Act had created an enhanced means of engaging the private sector and civil society to contribute meaningfully to national development.
Dr Benarkuu, also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the MIHOSO International Foundation, a Sunyani-based CSO, gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani on Saturday on the expectation of civil society about the 24-hour economy policy.
He indicated that the PPP Act had a lot of strategies, underlining the need for the Government through the Local Government Ministry to actively engage the private sector and attract investors and other development partners.
Strategies in the Act like the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) as well as the Build, Own Operate and Transfer (BOOT) could be accessed to facilitate considerable inflow of funding from investors.
“The investors can then partner with the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to provide some substantial funding for the local government structures that can generate more revenue,” he said.
“You understand that the government is still having a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and cannot borrow more because there are a lot of conditionalities”.
However, Dr Benarkuu noted that the government could use the BOT and the BOOT models to support the local CSOs, NGOs and the private sector to enter infrastructure development that could increase government revenue generation and create more jobs.
GNA
