By NATION REPORTER
GOVERNMENT does not care whether the National Pensions Scheme Authority (NAPSA) proceeds to enter a deal with Macro Ocean or not because they have a choice to do so or not without any interference from anywhere, Infrastructure Minister Charles Milupi has said.
Mr Milupi said Government was only concerned with the concessioner reaching a financial clause regardless of where they will get the money so that the construction of the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriage way could take off.
He said nobody in the government has directed NAPSA to work with Micro Ocean Investment Consortium and vice versa and that the two were free to agree without involving the government.
“You cannot get into a deal with the concessioner and at the same time direct them that you should go and get your money from that particular institution, that is not the way PPP works. There is no scam whatsoever in this arrangement,” Mr Milupi said.
Mr Milupi said the responsibility of actualising the deal remained with the concessioner to come up with a full package to sponsor the entire project whether local financial lending institutions participate or not.
He said after the deal is entered with the concessionaire the Public Private Partnership (PPP) act would mandate the concessioner to reach financial clauses for which within a period of time of six months, the financiers could be their own shareholders or lenders from outside the country or within.
Mr Milupi said the opposition were not happy with what the UPND had achieved and that they were using all forms of propaganda to make the government fail at every stage.
He said the UPND inherited a collapsed economy and a huge burden of debt such that the government could not borrow anymore in order to undertake infrastructure development projects thus embarking on PPP models that did not stress the treasury.
