LETTER: No use wringing your hands

Lungile Mashele’s column refers (“Beware of PPPs as a Trojan horse for privatisation”, February 15).

There is not the slightest risk or downside in encouraging public-private partnerships (PPPs) that we should fret about. We need this investment; we need the executional competence that comes with having your (or your investor’s) money on the line; and we need the capacity rehabilitation this will deliver.

Sitting on the sidelines wringing your hands in concern that PPPs might result in (horror) privatisation is an indulgent game played by people with socialist leanings and too much time on their hands.

Mashele asks “what will the private sector do that the public sector cannot?” Is this a serious question? The simple answer is: do it. That’s the difference. Not talk about it, fritter the money away as endless rent-seekers insert themselves in the value chain, and get deflected by every shift in mood by Gwede Mantashe or Ebrahim Patel.

The public sector does not function as it should and is incapable today of delivering large scale projects. For SA it’s PPPs or bust.

Martin Neethling
Via BusinessLIVE

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