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The Minister of State, incharge of Public Private Part-nership (PPP), Mr. Abdul Rashid Pelpuo, has announced that government is seeking private finances to fund the construction of five key infrastructural projects in the country.

The areas earmarked are energy, utilities, infrastructural development, housing and agricultural business.

Among the pipeline projects are the construction of an Inland Port at Boankra near Kumasi, the Eastern Railway Line and the establishment of a new national airline.

The rest are the dualisation of the Accra-Takoradi highway, construction of the Asutsuary Bulk Water project and several model markets and pedestrian footbridges at some parts of the country.

Addressing the opening of a five-day national PPP conference in Kumasi, the Minister said Ghana’s infrastructural gap stood at 1.76 billion dollars in investment for the next 10 years.

He said the government, since 2012, had been using a very little portion of its annual budget on infrastructural development since a chunk of it was used for paying public sector salaries.

He said the government, through the PPP, was seeking to accelerate the achievement of developmental goals by using private capital since such projects were no longer the sole responsibility of the state.

“Government currently is spen-ding about 57 per cent to support salaries under the Single Spine Salary Structure. This leaves a very small amount of money to undertake critical developmental projects, and, therefore, getting the private sector as partners is one critical area we cannot overlook,” he said.

The conference was attended by technical persons from the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) and some selected schools and institutions across the country.

Mr. Isaac Oware Aboagye, PPP Co-ordinator at the Ministry of Finance, explained that the five-day event was to comprehensively educate the participants on the PPP module instituted in 2011.

He explained that PPP was a specialised area that required specific expertise in projects identification, appraisal, selection, procurement, operations maintenance and performance, monitoring and evaluation.