Getting shovels into the cash pile
The Development Bank of Southern Africa sees hope in public-private partnerships, writes Tom Nevin
New hope is emerging that public-private partnerships might be the key that will unlock the estimated R600bn mountain of private capital looking for work in SA. This staggering amount of money seems to be corralled by the private sector, not because there is a dearth of opportunity to employ it but because of the ideological distance between the public sector and private companies. A constant preoccupation for Development Bank of Southern Africa GM for infrastructure finance Cyprian Marowa is keeping an eye on possibilities that might draw the two sides together in major nation-building enterprises. Marowa believes the issue should not be seen as a gulf of suspicion and mistrust, but as an ideological difference. "The private sector is driven around maximising profit," he observes. "That’s not the same agenda as the government’s, where it is more about maximising development impact. "Those two are not quite the same thing. In structuring public-private partnerships, governments have...
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