Gov’t Speeding up Procurement of 17 PPP Projects

Addis Ababa June 18/2019  The government is speeding up the procurement of 17 projects for Public Private Partnership (PPP), of which 14 are in energy sector, according to Ministry of Finance.

In an exclusive interview with ENA, Finance State Minister Teshome Tafesse said “eight solar projects have been open to procurement, out of which 2 are in the next Request for Proposal (RFP) phase.”

The bidders are therfore expected to submit the technical and financial proposals at the end of this month. The winner will be selected in July 2019, the state minster added.

For the six projects in phase one, over 85 international companies are registered,Teshome revealed.

“In total, by deploying 8 solar projects we will manage to produce about 1000 MW of power with estimated cost of 1 billion USD in collaboration with the private sector,” he noted.

World Bank Energy Specialist, Chiara Rogate lauded Ethiopia’s commitment to open up the energy sector, saying “there is a lot of progress that has been achieved on the regulatory.”

Rogate added that they have done a very strong assessment across sectors to determine the opportunities and also the barriers for the scale up of private sector participation in the off-grid space.

According to the energy specialist, World Bank is supporting Ethiopia across the value chain through providing technical assistance, including for the PPP, and scaling solar program.

Stating that opening up the sector to the private has taken time, she noted that it is a good thing as the government wants to ensure in developing the capacity to manage and have the right documents in place.

Of the total 17 PPP projects, 14 are in energy sector and the remaining in transport sector.