World Bank to Gov’t: Focus on Public-Private Partnership for Infrastructure Growth

The World Bank has asked the government of Uganda to work towards building a robust Public-private partnership (PPP) pipeline as a way of financing infrastructure and economic development.

The recommendation was made during the launch of the 9^th World Bank report on the Uganda’s economic performance for the 20016/17 Financial Year which took place at the Ministry of Finance Head Office in Kampala today.

Moses kibirige, the acting Country manager World Bank, noted that Uganda is currently unable to finance all the infrastructure developments needed to accelerate quick economic development using its taxes hence the need to involve the private sector in the development and implementation of the infrastructure projects.

“Most of Uganda’s economic challenges are due to poor implementation of public projects due to corruption tendencies and lack of capacity by some government agencies. We are positive that if the private sector gets more involved in the infrastructure sector development, there will be more efficiency in these projects as well as economic development.”

Rachael sebbude, the Task Leader World Bank Uganda Economic Update Team, said that although Uganda already has a PPP Act that would enable the fulfillment of the PPP policy legal frame work, there is still lack of institution, human resources as well as a well laid out processes and methodologies to implement the frameworks.

She observed that “PPP program has been slow to take off because government is not giving it the urgency necessary to make it work efficiently. We ask the government of Uganda to put in place all the necessary institutions as well as laws that will make this work because it is the most appropriate approach to Uganda’s financing problems.”

According to Economic Intelligence Unit Evaluation that was done in 2015, Uganda was ranked 8^th out of 15 African countries in terms of maturity of procurement processes related to PPP, lagging behind Kenya and Tanzania.

However, Uganda scored better in PPP contract management processes.

According to the World Bank report, Uganda has a great fiscal pace to increase PPPs in the future than Kenya and Tanzania because of its relatively low debt to GDP ratio.