The former President of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Seth Adjei-Baah, says local businesses are being crowded out in the government’s Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) agenda, describing it as ‘public-foreign partnerships.’

“In any project you see government looking for partnership, it means that government expects someone to bring in capital to invest for government to have such collaborations. Unfortunately, indigenous people don’t have such money. For instance, if government says it wants a public-private partnership in water plants, how many local people can raise about US$10 to US$50million dollars? It is not possible,” he said.

“Juicy projects that can bring good returns get into the hands of foreign investors. There is a need to look at how we can get the indigenous informal operators to bring them to the formal sector and grow them into the big companies that will help in the development of our economy. If we are able to do that, I believe things will work for us,” he added.

Mr. Adjei-Baah made these comments in Accra on the sidelines of a book launch: titled ‘Understanding the Urban Informal Sector in Ghana; a Survey Report’, the book is authored by Eben Tawiah Anuwa-Amarh and sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Ghana.

Government in 2011 launched a national Private Public Partnership (PPP) policy with the intention of leveraging private sector funds and expertise to close the country’s infrastructure deficit, which experts say will require sustained spending of US$1.5billion per annum for the next ten years.

The Finance Ministry subsequently developed a national PPP policy to provide a clear and consistent process for all aspects of PPP project development and implementation.

The PPPs were developed by government to enable private sector participation in the country’s development through the provision of infrastructure and services.

Commenting on the informal sector, Mr. Adjei-Baah noted that: “Because government is not recognising the position of the informal sector so as to support it, the sector finds it difficult to understand government, too. So when government is talking about taxes they don’t want to hear; not that they don’t know taxes will help to develop the economy, but they think they are lacking so many things they expect government to do for them.

“So government should understand them, and should be able to be able to collaborate with them so they will also understand the need to pay taxes. All we know is that the private sector is the engine of growth and about 71 percent of Ghanaians are within the informal sector. But it is high time we made them formal so that the economy can grow. Other than that, we have a challenge,” he added.

The author of the book, Eben Tawiah Anuwa-Amarh, is expectant that the book will bring about the needed change, saying: “I’m very hopeful that we will draw policy briefings out of it, and policymakers will have access to it to apply the findings that they think can aid in the transformation of this important sector of our economy, because this sector is staying with us for a long time to come”.

Key highlights of the research show that most people in the informal sector are young -- that is, about 80 percent are between 15 to 35 years. For levels of education, most of them come between Junior and Senior High School certificates.

“What this means is that we have to start developing the entrepreneurial skills of children at the JHS and SHS level, so that the country will have a pool of entrepreneurs who employ themselves and others as well. So if they are properly educated to understand the issues of taxation, they will pay to bring more money to government,” the author added.