Development of Policy, Legal, and Insitutional Framework for - ppiaf

Development of Policy, Legal, & Institutional Framework for the PPP Program in Malawi
Final Report
Another idea will be for the PPP Unit to “twin” with a mature and well established PPP Unit in
Africa, Asia, or Europe to support training and sharing of information. South Africa has the
advantage of proximity, and has a Public Finance Management Act similar to that of Malawi.
Knowledge Retention & Transfer
Knowledge retention & transfer is a major topic in many organizations. Retention of knowledge,
management of information, and development of underlying supporting structures has to be an
emphasis in any organization, including the new PPP Unit. As there was universal agreement
that the new PPP Unit should be small and agile, development of underlying support structures
would require having a backup person who is able to assume responsibility for PPP transaction,
and to support cross training and development of professional and technical staffs.
The common way is to have at least one senior person shadow another person. We suggests the
‘shadowing’ can be simply allocation of responsibility to ‘shadow’, this will not necessarily
mean attending meetings, only to ensure to set up regular briefings with their counterpart, go
through files and report issues and support quality assurance of documentation etc. This is one
of the best ways of cross training and developing supporting professional and technical staff.
We suggest that the supporting professional and technical people undertake more of project
management and documentation, tracking progress and logging into an Access database. In
addition, the PPP Unit can through this process develop a standardized up to date project filing
system. This will ensure that a lot of the details of project management are not lost and there is a
better appreciation of project tracking, monitoring, and recording of transactions, with the
Project Transaction Manager being primarily responsible for implementation rather than
tracking, monitoring, and recording.
V.I.
Relationship of PPP Unit to Other Government Departments and Agencies
We evaluated the relationship between central Government Departments and their Agencies.
The IP3 team examined in particular the Office of the President & Cabinet (OPC) together with
the Department of Statutory Corporations (DSC) and the Privatization Unit (PC), the Ministry
of Trade and Private Sector Development (MoTPSD), and the Malawi Investment Promotions
Agency (MIPA) and Export Agency, the Ministry of Finance and the Public Enterprise Reform
Monitoring Unit, as well as the Ministry of Economic Planning & Development (MoEPD).
The Role of Ministries in PPPs
In identifying the institutional framework for the PPP Unit, see Chapter 4, the team highlighted
the central role of line ministries. Ministries are required to identify, promote and champion
PPP projects, in which the Unit will play a supporting role in assessing affordability, value for
money and potential risk transfer to the private sector through a three-stage feasibility process.
The PPP Unit is there to support the output, not act as another level of bureaucracy.
The approach and relationship required by the PPP Unit and the line ministries including their
SOEs are at the opposite end of the spectrum for the privatization process. Under new PPP
initiatives, SOEs have to commercialize and strengthen their operations to match those of
potential private sector partners. This will call for initial investment to improve those areas
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