Public Sector Lacks Skills to Manage PPPs – Osinbajo

• Public Sector Lacks Skills to Manage PPPs – Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday said the public sector in most developing countries lacked the necessary skills to manage Public-Private Partnership projects.

Osinbajo spoke at the opening of a two-day PPP workshop organised by the Global Infrastructure Hub, in collaboration with the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission, Norton Rose Fulbright and Olaniwun Ajayi LP, in Abuja.

The workshop was organised to equip stakeholders with the Global Infrastructure Hub’s PPP Risk-Allocation Tools, with discussions revolving around some of the risks that were key to bankability and how they could be addressed.

Osinbajo commended the Global Infrastructure Hub for developing the PPP Risk Allocation and PPP Contract Management Tools, and for dedicating the workshop to the dissemination of the tools for the West African region.

He said, “This is important because the public sector in most developing economies, especially in our sub-region, simply lacks the necessary skills and tools to effectively manage PPP contracts.

“Drawing up this contract management tools and the annotated set of risk matrices demonstrating the successful allocation of risks between the public and private parties in PPP transactions is a great service to public sector parties in all of our countries.”

Osinbajo stated that the participation of top international law and finance practitioners, the multilateral development banks with the hub in the endeavour had greatly enhanced its usefulness and worth.

He added, “It also demonstrates the new approach to doing business in a globalised environment, the key being collaboration.

“Time was when the better resourced private sector looked to game the public sector in PPPs. Usually, such victories, if they could be so described, are pyrrhic; one more failed PPP, one more failed project.”

He also said a neglect of risk-allocation principles in PPP would not augur well for the system.

According to him, PPPs are imperative in government’s quest to finance, build and manage infrastructure, because the government does not have the resources to accomplish its desire to provide critical infrastructure for the people.