Directorate of Public Private Partnership

The high demand for infrastructure development, coupled with the pressures on national budgets, is making many governments move towards encouraging the private sector to invest in infrastructure projects.

In the Gambia, a narrow tax base, growing populations and aging infrastructure are straining the Government's capacity. The Government recognized these pervasive challenges and has therefore adopted a policy to encourage the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) as a means of leveraging public and private sector resources and expertise to close the infrastructure gap and deliver efficient public infrastructure and services.

Government recognizes the use of PPPs as a strategic mechanism for procuring, financing and delivering public infrastructure and related public services.

• a long-term contract between a public contracting authority and a private sector company based on the procurement of services, not assets, and taking account of the whole life cycle implications for the project;
• the transfer of a substantial part of project risks to the private sector, notably with respect to designing, building, operating and/or financing the project;
• a focus on the specification of project outputs rather than project inputs;
• the use of private financing to substantiate the risk transfer to the private sector; and
• performance-related payments to the private sector in function of the services delivered.