INFRASTRUCTURE, Housing, and Urban Development Minister Charles Milupi says the government will utilise the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to construct as many roads as possible.
In an interview, Friday, Milupi said government had no money to venture into road construction on its own.
“The number of roads being constructed is based upon the money available whether it is cheap, or expensive or the right cost and, so it’s the function of the money that is being available. What we are saying at the moment is that the government hasn’t got money and that is why we are going through the PPP route to construct as many roads as possible. Those are commercially viable roads. If you look at the budget of which I’m sure you have, you will see that this year it has gone down,” said Milupi.
“If you see two years ago it was K10.5 billion, last year again under PF it was down to K6.5 billion and this year it is down to K4.2 billion because there is no money. The economy was crippled by these people who were there. Most of that is going towards paying the debt that was accrued by these people through payment certificates that were not paid and loans that were obtained like from NAPSA. So because of that, what remains is extremely low for us to construct roads alone.”