Social Aspects in Public/Private Partnership Contracts Under Consideration

The Public/Private Partnership Contracts (PPP) framework by which projects of public interest are financed and implemented by private operators under the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) mechanism will soon go social in Cameroon. The Support Council for the Realisation of Partnership Contracts (CARPA), the legal and regulatory mechanisms put in place by the government to ensure efficiency in execution and attainment of set objectives within this framework and the German Cooperation (GIZ) have carried out a study on the sector, identifying challenges that could be surmounted to boost the alternative development tool.

According to the study presented to stakeholders in a ceremony chaired by the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Yaouba Abdoulaye, yesterday January 22 there is a lot that could be achieved in the social sector if the platform is well implemented. For example, the Marché Congo in Douala that was recently reduced to ashes, blocks in hospitals in Douala, Commercial centre of Bonamoussadi, Douala and some students' hostels in Buea, will be constructed under the PPP framework. The Technical Coordinator of CARPA, Justine Ntsama, in his presentation said in 2012, over FCFA 30 billion was mobilised to execute projects within the PPP mechanism.

To Yaouba Abdoulaye and CARPA President, Pauline Irène Nguene, government put in place the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper to guide in her development and no one will be left back in realising the development vision. "If you have a basis to know with whom to collaborate and with whom to go ahead to achieve goals, it will be easier to evolve in mobilising financing and technical knowledge. I think the study will be a good basis to know the path covered and an incitation for a sustainable public/private partnership contracts in Cameroon," Coly Annette, Head of the German Cooperation in Cameroon, said. Whereas to the Deputy Director of GIZ, Walter Engelberg, "the content of this study goes beyond what GIZ has been working on so far. It goes to seek ways of improving the public/private partnerships. We have been working to build partnerships between private companies to bring them to do things which they would not do for their profits. We have in the East Region lots of enterprises and lots of wood available in the forest which could be processed into charcoal badly needed in places like the Far North Region. We went into partnership with these companies to help them produce charcoal in an industrial scale so as to improve the marketing conditions for charcoal." Both parties prayed government to put in place legal and administrative tools to the render the social aspects of PPP better functional.