Cost Of Gov't Projects To Be Standardized

Minister of State in charge of Public Procurement has said the cost of all infrastructure contracts will in the coming months be standardised to ensure value for money.

According to Adwoa Sarfo, budget overruns in the procurement of contracts will now be a thing of the past going forward.

It follows a World Bank report which shows that even though Ghana needs about $1.5 billion for investments and infrastructural projects, the country loses $1.1 bn to project delivery inefficiencies.

Adwoa Sarfo was speaking at the Value for Money Conference in Accra.

She said, “We can come up with standardisation for projects mainly schools, hospitals and roads so that we have contractors who come in and there are standard prices for building a three-classroom block, you can’t go above it neither can you go below it.

“One-kilometre roads should cost the same across the country. We need to have standard pricing,” she added.

On his part, Senior Minister, Yaw Osarfo Marfo, expressed government’s readiness to deal with project overruns in order to deal with the cost element incurred.

“The object of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) is to harmonise the processes of public procurement in the public service to secure a judicious, economic and efficient use of state resources in public procurement and ensure that public procurement is carried out in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory manner,” he revealed.

To this end, the government is introducing new reforms to address revenue shortfalls in project overruns. Among these reforms are the review of the licensing regime to ensure that government contractors have the requisite qualified and experienced engineers in their team to ensure works are done to specification.

The government will also ensure that contractors must provide evidence of availability of funds to complete projects on time before the contracts are signed. There also will be a daily timeline to the competition of projects.

The value for money in the provision of infrastructure in Africa has been a worrying issue to the development partners especially when Ghana loses $1.1 billion each year on infrastructure projects due to project deliverances inefficiency.

The conference was under the theme; Public Infrastructure projects, a new way of thinking to ensure value for money.