We welcome this week’s agreement by the Asian Development Bank to lend US$110m to support infrastructure development under PPP schemes.
Building new and improved power capacity, roads, and water networks is essential to accelerate development, both by stimulating local productivity and by increasing the country’s attractiveness to overseas investors.
It is helpful that the World Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) will also be providing further contributions worth $195m to top up $50m coming from private sector investors for projects managed by the government’s Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL).
The World Bank board has also approved $210m of further funding to build 8 new food silos to improve the country’s food security. The new silos, which are scheduled to be built by June 2020, will increase capacity by over a third and be designed to preserve food for longer periods of up to four to five years.
Having a sensible mixture of projects and objectives can help ensure that PPP schemes are implemented efficiently. It is encouraging to see the new finance targeting schemes to help communities across the country and in more remote areas, via for instance IDCOL’s successful programs to finance off-grid solar home systems for households and small businesses.
The government should build on successful PPP projects to leverage new funding for investment in infrastructure to secure long-term growth and productivity.