Commission ready to facilitate PPPs in city councils
Kabambe-We are ready to support projects
The Public Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) has expressed readiness to facilitate infrastructure projects in local councils in case the latter reaches concessions with capable industry players.
PPPC Chief Executive Officer Patrick Kabambe said this at the first City Summit which Blantyre City Council held on Wednesday to find solutions to prevailing problems like improper waste disposal and poor security.
Kabambe believes the suggested approach could enable Public Private Partnerships –PPPs at local council level;
“If Blantyre is going to be a major commercial city, it’s important that all stakeholders come in and contribute to the development of the vision. For us as PPPC our role is to work with public agencies and private sector to come up with projects which can be financed by private sector.
“As we all know, we cannot expect that Blantyre city can raise all the resources either from the national budget or the city rates to do all the infrastructure development that is need in the city so it’s important that we should look at the private as a partner of the development of the city,” Kabambe said.
Blantyre City Mayor Wild Ndipo hailed the summit for it’s, as industry players among other sectors have presented proposed solutions to three thematic areas selected by the council.
“We are looking at Blantyre as one of the cleanest and safest cities but we’ve seen that overtime there is no cleanness and safety to the standards, so we are saying we should engage stakeholders on what to do to enable the set standards to be met,” Ndipo said.
Minister Richard Chimwendo Banda has meanwhile challenged city councils to strengthen resource mobilisation for smooth operationalization of the aspired projects.
He said apart from sealing deals with industry players, there is need for local councils to strengthen their resource mobilisation capacity for them to ably fund some projects on their own.
The local government ministry initiated the idea of holding city summits with the hope of aligning the goals of local councils with the Malawi 2063.
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